Matt Damon missed out on a cool $250 million dollar payday when he turned down the starring role in Avatar and director James Cameron can’t help but to laugh.
Cameron originally pitched Damon to star in the 2009 film and even offered him a 10% cut of box office profits, Damon revealed in 2021 while at Cannes Film Festival. Given that the film went on to gross over $2 billion, that would have equaled a payday of over $250 million.
“I will go down in history… you will never meet an actor who turned down more money,” Damon said at the time, according to Deadline.
In a recent BBC interview, Cameron was asked about the actor and he immediately erupted in laughter.
“He’s beating himself up over this and I really think you know, ‘Matt you’re kind of like one of the biggest movie stars in the world, get over it,'” Cameron said before explaining why Damon had to turn the film down. “He had to do another ‘Bourne’ film which was on his runway and there was nothing we could do about that. So he had to regretfully decline.”
Although Damon missed out on a chance to be in the first movie, Cameron is open to him appearing in a future Avatar sequel but he doesn’t plan on giving him the same deal.
“Must do it. We have to do it so the world is in equilibrium again. But he doesn’t get 10%, f*** that,” Cameron said.
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