The movie Denzel Washington got paid twice for making: “My agent was a master businessman”
As one of the biggest and most popular stars in Hollywood, it’s only fair that Denzel Washington is one of the highest-paid. The dramatic powerhouse and action hero extraordinaire regularly pockets an eight-figure salary for his starring roles, and in one case, he was fortuitous enough to be paid twice.
The beacon for any aspiring thespian who wants to toe the line between being an actor and a movie star, Washington has mastered the best of both worlds. He’s a two-time Academy Award-winning icon who’s been lauded as one of the greatest to ever grace the silver screen, but that’s only one side of his career.
The other is that of arguably the most consistent box office draw in modern cinema; if a film promises Washington wielding a gun, beating up bad guys, or surviving extraordinary circumstances in a heightened genre flick, then it’s virtually guaranteed to turn a tidy profit.
Fittingly, the feature that got him a lucrative payday twice over existed somewhere in the middle. It was a sprawling biographical drama rooted in the seedy underbelly of New York City’s rampant criminality, but it was also a massive hit that became – and still is – the single highest-grossing release of Washington’s entire career.
It wasn’t an easy road to the screen for American Gangster by any stretch, with screenwriter Steve Zaillian bringing the script to Ridley Scott in 2002. He declined in favour of Kingdom of Heaven, and after Brian De Palma briefly flirted with the project, it ended up in the hands of Antoine Fuqua.
The filmmaker was set to reunite with the leading man he’d directed to a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar in Training Day, and Washington signed a pay-or-play deal that ensured he’d be able to cash his cheque regardless of whether American Gangster even made it in front of cameras. It did, but not in that iteration, with Fuqua departing to be replaced by Scott to bring things full circle.
Because American Gangster had fallen apart with Fuqua, the studio was obligated to honour the terms of Washington’s deal, which netted him an estimated $20million. When Scott officially signed on and wanted to keep the actor onboard as Frank Lucas, it meant Universal had to shell out all over again to keep him in the main role.
“My late agent, Ed Limato, god rest his soul, was a master businessman,” Washington admitted to The Guardian. “He said: ‘You have a contract, and it will be honoured’. So it went away for a couple of years, then they called and said Ridley Scott was interested.”
Washington was always keen to embody Lucas, but getting paid a substantial salary for a second time was a welcome bow on top of the package.
