He may have a vault full of swan dive-ready gold coins, but due to the fact that he's an animated bird, Scrooge McDuck isn't actually the highest-paid actor in show business. Instead, that illustrious honour goes to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson...until now.
Forbes published its annual list of top-paid stars and an unlikely underdog took the top spot from the WWE vet: Mark Wahlberg.
Entertainment Weekly reports that data from 2016 showed Wahlberg besting the Rock in terms of pre-tax earnings. In Forbes' 12-month window, Wahlberg earned $68 million. In comparison, Johnson had two films, including The Fate of the Furious and Baywatch, and took home $65 million. Don't feel too bad for the guy, however, because that figure still puts him at no. 2 and the amount is more than he made the year before. In 2015, the Rock made $64.5 million.
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EW notes that Wahlberg's main 2016 film offering was critically panned — Transformers: The Last Knight — but he still took home a huge paycheck for the fifth chapter of the Autobots saga. Thanks to "fixed compensation," Wahlberg gets a big payout even if nobody actually sees his movies, Forbes notes.
Johnson's co-star, Vin Diesel, earned the no. 3 spot on Forbes' list, though the margin between the two pals is huge (by normal standards, at least). Thanks to his role in Fast 8 and the newest XXX instalment, Diesel earned $54.5 million.
A name on the list that may be surprising to some is Jackie Chan. The actor banked $49 million mostly from Chinese films, earning him a spot at no. 5 on the list. Unsurprisingly, superheroes also managed to earn top spots. Robert Downey Jr., who previously held the highest-paid actor spot in 2015, dropped to sixth place, and Marvel's Chrises — Evans, Pratt, and Hemsworth — all appear on the list, too.
As for Scrooge McDuck, he tops Forbes' list of fictional characters with a total net worth of over $65 billion. It'll take a while for Wahlberg to catch up to the duck, but if he does, we bet a dip in gold coins feels pretty sweet.
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