Forbes Magazine just posted an article where they mathematically determined a way to figure out which celebrities really were the most overpaid. It's super interesting, but they forgot to stick the landing.
Most magazines just print salaries and back end deals, which makes us say things like "Holy Crap! Tom Hanks got 170 bajillion dollars for The Da Vinci Code? That movie was so boring!" There's no context, no taking into account how much the movie made overall, etc.
Forbes, however, did something much more interesting. They derived a formula to figure out how much a movie made for every dollar that was spent on a star's salary. They looked at the last three films from "the biggest stars in the industry," added up their worldwide box office plus DVD revenue, and subtracted out the budgets (which includes star salaries). This number was called the "net revenue." I did wonder where they got their data for budgets (especially marketing), but I ignored that ambiguity for the time being.
Then Forbes divided that "net revenue" by the stars' salaries. That gave them information such as, "for every dollar spent on Nicole Kidman's salary, her movies return just $8 on average to the studios" or "Angelina Jolie (who makes less than Kidman) gives her studios $15 back on average for her last three films.
I found this to be a fantastic way to derive star value, because it naturally lessens the impact of low budget or independent films, which pay their stars less, have smaller budgets, and (in a sane world) lower box office expectations. When most people just average the box office take of a star's filmography, it never takes those differences into account.
So, why did I say that they dropped the ball? It's because THEY DIDN'T PUBLISH THE FREAKING LIST!
Sure, they call out Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman as stars that aren't worth their salary, and they have this annoying picture gallery that makes me click through pages (and up their eyeball count for advertisers) which lists more people (Will Ferrell, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, etc.) but they don't show their work. Who are the worst 20? More interestingly, who are the top 20? Who brings in the audiences, but commands a low paycheck?
Maybe it's in the printed version of the magazine, but I can't tell you how disappointed I was to not be able to see the whole list.
