Director Tim Miller reveals the amount
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| Image Credit: 20th Century Studios |
The Walt Disney Company was the only studio to surpass $5 billion in box office revenue in 2024. This was largely due to Deadpool & Wolverine, which grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide. Deadpool was a big hit at the former 20th Century Fox, but director Tim Miller's fee for the first Deadpool movie (2016) was surprisingly not that high. Director Miller himself revealed this on Collider. Before Deadpool, Miller had mainly worked on visual effects, and this was his first time directing a feature film. This project was also a passion project promoted by Ryan Reynolds, and the production cost was low at $58 million.
Miller said that he gained "pride" from working on Deadpool and leading it to success. "Every time I walk down the aisles at CCXP (Brazil Comic Con), I see Deadpool figures. I wonder if all of this would have been lost if I hadn't made that movie. I'm so happy to have been able to play a part in it," he said, expressing his satisfaction at being able to send off Deadpool, now one of the most popular characters, in a movie. On the other hand, his financial situation is another topic. "I wish I had included merchandising in the directorial project. That would have brought in some money," he continued, secretly revealing the inside story of his compensation.
"You probably don't know this, but in Hollywood, first-time directors don't make much money. To be more specific, I got $225,000 for directing Deadpool. It sounds like a lot of money, but considering that it took me two years to make it, it's not that much." Based on the average exchange rate in 2016 (108.77 yen to the dollar), it comes to about 24,473,250 yen. This amounts to a little over 12 million yen per year, which certainly seems cheap for an ambitious director's fee for a film that ended up being a hit with over 780 million dollars and pioneered a new direction for Marvel movies. The explanation that the fee for a first-time director is cheap seems to speak to the inside story of how unexpected new directors are sometimes chosen for huge IP films.
However, Miller is not complaining that he was "cheaply paid." "It's not that I'm not grateful. I'm extremely grateful," he added, and concluded, "That's how much you get for your first film as a director. My agent told me, 'You can make more money from one episode of The Walking Dead!'" Miller has not returned to the Deadpool series since and has recently served as executive producer on the three Sonic the Hedgehog movies and the video game-based Prime Video animated series The Secret Level.
Thanks to the success of Miller's first film, the sequel, "Deadpool 2" (2018), will cost $110 million, and "Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024) will cost $200 million, doubling the scale of the project. Surprisingly, the director of the first film was employed for about 12 million yen a year. Considering the taxes, his take-home pay must have been even less. Wow... my annual income is too low...?