Why did Josh Brolin earn only $5 million for Avengers: Infinity War? He had such a large amount of screen time.
What’s important to remember about Infinity War is that, despite it being such a massive media event, it’s still a product that cost money to make, and that money was indeed finite. At 350-400 Million Dollars, it’s about on par with a later Pirates of the Carribean movie.
And then consider the number of A-list actors aboard; it’s estimated that Robert Downey Jr. alone was paid around 40–50 Million, Scarlett Johannsen charged 20 Million- you should be getting a good idea of how much money was left spare for Brolin.
While he’s technically appeared in the MCU before, ‘Infinity War’ was Brolin’s real debut in the franchise. And while he’s been in Hollywood for many years, I’d hardly call him an A-List actor like Samuel L Jackson or Chris Pratt.
Your pay in a movie is not determined solely by your skill and time, it’s determined by how much you and your agent can convince the studio to pay you- and the more value you as an actor offer a project, the more you can haggle for. Brolin was paid very handsomely for his time – 5 Million Dollars is a LOT of money for less than a year’s work, after all – but he wasn’t as valuable to the project’s viability as other actors who have been attached to the role for years, and thus he wasn’t paid the same amount as other actors.
If we lived in a timeline where, say, Jeffrey Dean Morgan had played Thanos, then it wouldn’t feel out of place.
Whilst we nerds may have known Thanos was coming since 2012, and have read the comics and anticipated Brolin in the role, the mass market has not done so. Most people only go to the cinema a few times a year- and when they do, they go to see something they know they’ll enjoy, so they watch a movie starring one of their favourite actors.
Josh Brolin’s name is nowhere near as effective a marketing tool as Robert Downey Jr’s is. Attaching the name ‘Robert Downey Jr’ to a movie almost guarantees a movie will make money nowadays. Josh Brolin, as amazing a performance as he gave, did not have the same level of marketability before ‘Infinity War’- and perhaps doesn’t even then. And remember – you agree your pay before a camera is ever pointed at you.