Jurassic World franchise star Bryce Dallas Howard has revealed she was ‘paid so much less’ than co-star Chris Pratt.
Jurassic World is a trilogy of films set after Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies from 1993 to 2001.
The premise is an attempt by franchises to clone dinosaurs from prehistoric DNA— and it usually goes horribly wrong.
The first Jurassic World film (2015) grossed a whopping $1.6 billion worldwide, and held the third highest grossing film of all time when it was released.
Howard and Pratt were cast as leads in the sci-fi action movies, signing deals for the trilogy that included Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World Dominion.
The trilogy was so high profile, Howard says she was ‘at a great disadvantage’ when it came to her salary.
In the followup, 22 years have passed, and we have Jurassic World, a dinosaur theme park.
As Claire Dearing, a workaholic operations manager who’s one of the scientists working to study the dinosaurs, Howard plays her.
Howard has since spoken out about working on the Jurassic World movies and how she wasn’t paid the same as her male co-star.
According to a 2019 study by Dr. Sofia Sanchez, John S. Heywood, and Maria Navarro Paniagua, there’s a gender pay gap in Hollywood.
The research, which took into account the movie’s genre and the actor’s overall popularity, found ‘female stars earned on average $2.2m less per film.’
It was 2014 and it was a whole different world and I was at a great disadvantage when I started negotiating for Jurassic. Unfortunately, you have to sign up for three movies, so your deals are set.” And, unfortunately, you have to sign up for three movies.
In 2018, Variety reported that for the sequel Jurassic World: Howard was paid $8 million while Pratt made $10 million.
The actress never disclosed how much she actually made off the movies, but she says she was paid even less than was claimed.
She told Insider: “The reports were so interesting because I was paid so much less than the reports even said, so much less.”
Pratt told her that he fought to even the playing field for franchise opportunities like video games and theme park rides.
The actress explained: “Whenever there was an opportunity to move the needle on stuff that hadn’t been already negotiated, like a game or a ride, he (Pratt) literally told me, ‘You guys don’t even have to do anything. I’m gonna do all the negotiating. We’re gonna be paid the same, and you don’t have to think about this, Bryce.’
“I love him so much for doing that. I really do, because I’ve been paid more for those kinds of things than I ever was for the movie.”
The actress reprised her role for voice parts in video games, rides, and series such as Lego Jurassic World, Lego Dimensions, Lego Jurassic World: The Indominus Escape, Jurassic World Evolution, Jurassic World: The Ride, and Jurassic World Evolution 2.
It isn’t the only time Hollywood stars have spoken out about pay discrepancy.
Jessica Chastain said her paycheck for the 2015 film The Martian was incorrectly reported and she ‘made less than a quarter of that in reality.’
Jessica Chastain claims she ‘made less than a quarter of that The Martian paycheck in reality’ and her pay for the 2015 film was incorrectly reported.
While lead co-star Matt Damon garnered anywhere from $15 to $25 million from his role, the actress was paid about $1.75 million.