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James McAvoy starred in Wanted with Angelina Jolie. It made $342,000,000 worldwide. He says some of his residual checks now come in at 25 cents. "It literally costs more to post this than it did for me to check it, cash it," he says. In the video below, McAvoy tells Josh Horowitz the one movie that still pays him. It's not the one you'd guess. The one that keeps paying is Split. He says it was made "for like $6 million or something." Box Office Mojo lists $9,000,000. It opened to $40,000,000 in North America and made $278,000,000 worldwide. So his first residual check came "at the end of the first weekend," he says. Wanted cost $75,000,000 and made $342,000,000. "I don't get too much money from, from Wanted," he says. Now he's directing. His first film, California Schemin', had "3 million, three-ish million," he says. That bought a five-week shoot. 25 days. He says he made Last King of Scotland for the same 3 million and shot for 10 weeks in foreign countries. When the money ran short, he told his producers he'd do whatever it took to get it. Even "kiss someone's ass." "I didn't need to give any sexual favors in the end, which is brilliant," he says. California Schemin' has made about $720,000 worldwide, per The Numbers. The case for the studios: McAvoy got paid up front for Wanted, hit or flop. Back end money only shows up when a movie turns a profit on paper. Split did that in one weekend, he says. Most movies never do. So should actors get a cut of every hit they're in, or is the up-front check the whole deal?

Sophie Cunningham says she made about $28,000 her rookie year in the WNBA, after taxes. An NBA rookie on the league minimum makes $1,357,763 this season. "I need to get a job," she says she thought. In the video below, Cunningham tells Theo Von what WNBA players used to do just to get by. Cunningham came into the league in 2019. Now she plays with Caitlin Clark on the Indiana Fever. "My rookie year, after taxes, everything, I think I made like $28,000," she says. She says one player from Seattle "was working at like a grocery store and playing in the WNBA." For years the real money was overseas. Players went to "China, Russia, Turkey, Spain," she says, and "would make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars over there." She stopped going, because she "was making more money in marketing agreements." Theo asked if any players do OnlyFans. She said it's not for her. Now there's a new labor deal, and she says "we're all making good money now." The case for the gap: The NBA brings in many times more money from TV deals and tickets. Pay in both leagues is tied to what the league earns. And WNBA salaries are finally going up as the money comes in. So should WNBA players get paid like NBA players, or should pay follow the money the league makes?

As a teenager, Cher sang on Phil Spector hits for a $25 check. Then she married Sonny Bono, who she says owned 95 percent of a company called Cher Enterprises. She owned zero. She says it was "170 something million dollars in today's money." She left with a car and her clothes. In the video below, Cher tells Howard Stern what Sonny said when she asked him why. She was 16 when she met him. He was 27. She had no place to live, she says, so she stayed with him. He handed her papers to sign. The company had her name on it. She writes in her memoir that she thought it sounded cool. Then David Geffen got a copy of her contract. Sonny had 95 percent. His lawyer had the rest. Cher had nothing. She'd been there "every day for 12 years," she told Sonny. Through the years they were so broke they were "borrowing money from Joseph, who was our chauffeur." His answer, she says, was "because I knew you'd always leave me." Her divorce papers called it "involuntary servitude." And it wasn't the first time. Back when she sang backup for Spector, her mom thought she was lying about having a job. "My mother didn't believe I was working because I didn't get paid," she says. One of those records was You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'. BMI later named it the most played song on American radio and TV of the 20th century. "Everybody else bought houses with that record," she says. Cher got $25. The case for Sonny: he took in a 16-year-old with nowhere to live, wrote I Got You Babe and built the act. Cher says she tried not to make him a villain in her book. She made the money. He owned it. So was Sonny the man who made Cher, or the man who took everything she made?

James McAvoy was offered about 40,000 pounds to wait around for a part in Harry Potter, a franchise that went on to make $7,700,000,000. He turned it down. He took a play that paid him 275 pounds a week instead. "I got booed by a homophobic gentleman," he says. In the video below, McAvoy tells Josh Horowitz who talked him out of the money. It was right at the start of his career. He auditioned to play young Tom Riddle, the boy who grows up to be Voldemort. The studio wanted to put him and about 10 other actors on a retainer, he says. Pay them now, pick one later. "It was a ton of money," he says. "It was like 40,000 pounds or something like that." The catch was he couldn't take any other work for about seven months. So he asked his agent, Ruth Young. She's still his agent 25 years later. "She was like, absolutely not. Don't do that." He did the play. 275 pounds a week. "But it was part of the making of me," he says. Tom Riddle went to another actor. McAvoy went on to play Professor X. And Harry Potter is back. HBO's new series is set to premiere on Christmas Day. The case for the money: 40,000 pounds was a fortune for an actor who'd barely worked. A retainer pays you to sit still, and an unknown actor never knows when the next check is coming. Most people would've signed. So would you take 40,000 pounds to wait seven months for a maybe, or 275 pounds a week to actually act?

Hilary Swank won the Oscar for Best Actress for Boys Don't Cry. The movie made $20,700,000 worldwide. She says it paid her $3,000. That year you needed to make $5,000 just to get health insurance. "I had an Academy Award, but I didn't have health insurance," she says. In the video below, Swank tells the story. Then it gets worse. Boys Don't Cry cost about $2,000,000 to make, per The Numbers. Swank had the lead. "We had no money," she says. "I made $3,000 when I did that movie." It was the only job she did that year. So she fell short of the $5,000 line for coverage. She was 25 when she won. People called her an overnight success. "Well, I'd been acting for nine years. That was one long night," she says. Five years later she won a second Oscar, for Million Dollar Baby. Then she was offered a movie opposite a guy who'd never had a critical hit. "He got offered $10 million, and I got offered $500,000," she told Chelsea Handler. She said no. She says the part went to a newcomer who took $50,000. The case for the studios: Boys Don't Cry was a tiny indie nobody expected to win anything. Everyone worked cheap to get it made. And Hollywood pays for who sells tickets, not for who wins trophies. So should an Oscar come with a raise, or is the paycheck only about the box office?

Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 to stay quiet about Donald Trump. Now his lawyers say she owes them over $600,000 Piers Morgan asked how much she's paid so far. "Zero," she said. In the video below, she explains why she'd rather go to jail than hand Trump a penny. It was October 2016, less than two weeks before the election. Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 to keep a 2006 encounter out of the news. Trump has always denied it happened. "As a matter of fact, I took the money because I didn't want anybody to know," Daniels says. She spent some of it on a horse trailer. Trump later called her "Horseface" on Twitter. She says she appreciates "the hilarity and the irony." Then she sued Trump for defamation over a 2018 tweet. She lost. Courts ordered her to cover his legal fees. His attorney puts the total at more than $600,000. Daniels says some of it is offset by cases she won against him. Piers reminded her she'd said "I will go to jail before I pay a penny." "Absolutely," she said. "I didn't come this far to back down and to give him money." The case for paying: She chose to sue, she lost, and two courts ruled against her. Even she admits it. "His attorneys, however, are owed the money," she says. "They did a job." But Cohen went to prison over that payment. And in 2024 a jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts tied to it. So she says paying him now is "like having to pay your rapist for the sex." And her own lawyer, Michael Avenatti, got four years for stealing nearly $300,000 of her book advance. She says he took her legal defense fund too. So should Stormy Daniels have to pay Trump's lawyers?

Kevin O'Leary offered the man behind Ring $700,000 on Shark Tank. When he said no, O'Leary told him "you're dead to me." Five years later Amazon bought Ring for a reported $1 billion. O'Leary says he would have made "about 800 million dollars." In the video below, O'Leary tells the story of the deal that got away, and the guy who still rubs it in every year. It was 2013. Jamie Siminoff walked in with a video doorbell called DoorBot. He asked for $700,000 for 10% of the company. He'd done about a million dollars in sales, all online. Four sharks said no. O'Leary made the only offer. $700,000, a 10% royalty on every sale until he got his money back, then 7% after that, plus 5% of the company. Siminoff wouldn't give up a cut of every sale. "It'll bleed us of cash while we really need it the most." He countered with a loan instead, $700,000 at 10% interest plus 3% of the company. O'Leary passed. "Not interested." Then came the line. "It's that moment when I say you're dead to me." "Respectfully, Mr. Wonderful, we're going to decline." In 2018 Amazon bought the company, now called Ring. That same year Siminoff came back to Shark Tank as a guest shark. O'Leary says they're friends now. Every year they have lunch on Nantucket the day after the 4th of July, and "he just grinds it into me every time." The funny part is how O'Leary remembers it now. He says his offer was a $600,000 loan, and "it's not a royalty but it's interest." On the show he said "I want a ten percent royalty." The loan was Siminoff's idea, and O'Leary turned it down. The case for O'Leary: DoorBot was a $199 gadget that hadn't landed its first big retailer yet. He was the only shark willing to put in money, so he wanted to get paid first. And Siminoff later told Business Insider that when cash ran low, "I would have gone back and taken the devil's money at that point." The case for Siminoff: a cut of every sale, for life, is a tax on growth. "I don't believe you can build a big company having one person take 10% of the sales for life," he said on his way out. O'Leary says he cries "like a baby" when he loses 10 bucks. This one was 800 million. So was O'Leary's deal greedy, or did Siminoff just get lucky?