Harrison Ford's Galactic £23 million Pay Cheque For The Force Awakens

Harrison Ford’s pay cheque for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ is said to have made a rather substantial 76 times more than newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega were paid for their parts in the movie.

According to a report in the Mail on Sunday, Ford, who reprises his role as Han Solo, got a fee of £16.7 million, and will get 0.5 per cent of profits from the movie.

So far the movie is being predicted to haul in somewhere in the region of £1.3 billion, meaning that Ford’s final cheque is likely to be in the region of £23 million.

That compares to the reported £300,000 that Ridley and Boyega signed up for, though they’ll likely get a percentage point of the profits too.

It’s said that Ford also received £1 million in compensation after his leg was broken in the door of the Millennium Falcon while filming at Pinewood Studios.

It puts Ford’s fee for the first Star Wars movie, a more modest £7000, into some perspective.

A source at Disney told the paper: “Harrison is the key to making this movie work. He’s the link between the old generation and the new.

“Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were good to get, but the film could have lived without them. You couldn’t make it without Harrison Ford.

“Daisy’s a virtual unknown, and this is a career-making role, so she’d probably have been willing to take it for free – and Disney knew it.

“She has been signed to a multi-picture deal with pre-set bumps in her salary that rise substantially with each movie. That doesn’t guarantee she’ll be in subsequent films, but it gives the studio peace of mind to know she’s contractually obliged if they want her again.”

The paper also reports that director J.J. Abrams earned £3.3 million, while Carrie Fisher was paid £1 million.

So far the movie had broken all manner of records – good news for Ford, then – including the biggest ever US debut (£160 million) and the biggest opening weekend of all time in countries including the UK, Russia, Australia, Germany, Sweden and Norway.

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Image credits: Disney