Adam Sandler is the Most Overpaid Actor of 2014

One might argue all movie stars are overpaid in comparison to essential professions like teachers or first responders, but in the grand scheme of things they earn their keep; their work generates absurd amounts of money, and for that work they are in turn paid slightly less absurd amounts of money.

But when those movies fail to turn profits as expected, then those actors can become objectively overpaid, as chronicled each year in a list compiled by Forbes. The 2014 edition of their most overpaid actor list went up today, and it doesn’t look good for Adam Sandler, he of ‘Blended,’ ‘Jack and Jill,’ and assorted other terrible movies. According to Forbes, Sandler is—for the second straight year!—Hollywood’s most overpaid actor. As Happy Gilmore himself once said, the price is wrong, b-tch.

Here’s Forbes’ methodology: They looked at each big Hollywood actor’s last three movies, and then compared their box-office takes and their salaries to figure out how much money each star generated per dollar they were paid. In Sandler’s case, for each $1 he made, the studio made $3.20.

Here are the five most overpaid actors of 2014 according to Forbes:

1. Adam Sander - $3.20
2. Johnny Depp - $4.10
3. Ben Stiller - $4.80
4. Ryan Reynolds - $4.90
5. Tom Hanks - $5.20

It’s not surprising to see Depp on the list; he’s had just as bad a stretch of films as Sandler (at least financially), and his movies cost a heck of a lot more than Sandler’s as well. Tom Hanks’ name is a bit of a surprise given that ‘Saving Mr. Banks’ and ‘Captain Phillips’ were both modest successes; they (and ‘Cloud Atlas,’ which flopped) must have cost more than I realized.

But back to Sandler. Even if he is the most overpaid actor in Hollywood, he’s laughing all the way to the bank; he recently inked a deal with Netflix to produce and star in four original movies for the streaming video service. So now he’s the most overpaid star of multiple formats. As The Wedding Singer himself once said, whoopity doo!