One of the big conversations during (and after) the 2023 Actors Strike was about actors’ residuals, basically the money they get years after a film or television show comes out. Residuals usually come from re-airs of the show or film. Back in the day, actors could make a decent living on residuals, especially if they made films or shows which regularly re-aired on cable stations. Streaming really broke that model, and the Actors Strike tried and failed to fix it. Nowadays, actors are being regularly asked about residuals and, from what I gather, the residual system is still completely broken. Well, Josh Horowitz asked James McAvoy about his residual checks and McAvoy confirmed that most of the checks are for pennies, but he did one film which still gets consistent residuals.

James McAvoy’s interest in the horror movie genre seems to be a lucrative choice. During Thursday’s episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the actor revealed that although he “very rarely ever sees anything” from his films, he does “consistently” get residuals for Split.

“You get the odd check for, you know, a couple 100 quid [British pounds] here or sometimes you get checks for, like, 25 cents and you’re like, ‘It literally costs more to post this than it did for me to cash it,’” McAvoy explained to host Josh Horowitz. “But the only one that really consistently pays me is Split.”

In the 2016 horror movie from M. Night Shyamalan, McAvoy played a man with dissociative identity disorder, and therefore acted out multiple onscreen personalities. The Blumhouse Productions film was a commercial success and grossed $278 million worldwide on a budget of $9 million.

“I think it was made for like $6 million or something like that? And let’s say they spent 30 advertising it. In our first weekend, we made 40, so we were in profit,” McAvoy shared of the flick’s business model. “Our first residual check came at the end of the first weekend. It was bonkers.”

McAvoy credited Shyamalan for Split’s financial and artistic success, saying the writer-director “is super smart in so many ways.” He learned lessons from him that he utilized while making his directorial debut, California Schemin’.

“I very consciously took from many of the directors that I worked with, and subconsciously as well, but the thing I took away from him is his preparedness,” McAvoy shared of Shyamalan. “He made that film, and [sequel] Glass, on incredibly modest budgets, and very focused on how he would maximize his day and maximize his shots and maximize what he got out of the story by just being incredibly well-prepared and being able to share that and communicate that with the crew.”

[From EW]

I was thinking about McAvoy’s career – which is fantastic – and I realized that he actually hasn’t been in many movies which constantly re-air. His argument is that Split still makes him so much money because Night did it on such a small budget, which… fair. Credit to Night, Split was part of his back-to-basics comeback after he made a couple of big studio films which bombed and lost a lot of money. Anyway, I just found it interesting – Horowitz guessed that McAvoy’s most lucrative film, residual-wise, was Wanted, but McAvoy said no. Surprising!

Screencaps courtesy of the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ video. Additional pics courtesy of Cover Images.