I just don't believe this information is correct.
For these big budget franchises, the actors likeness rights are tied up in their movie contract. Actors don't negotiate that separately for each piece of merchandise that comes out. Merchandising is how the studios make a ton of their money and justify spending $200M on these tent pole movies.
Potentially RDJ may not have signed his likeness away because when he did Iron Man 1, it wasn't exactly a big deal to be in a Marvel movie....but the flip side is that he signed because he had no career at that point, so I don't know if he negogiated to separate likeness rights for Iron Man toys.
He 'was told' RDJ requested $2m for likeness rights from Hot Toys. By who? And when?
Remember to 99% of the world, the 1/6 market is still totally unknown. But he wanted $2M from Hot Toys directly? That seems ....weird....
Until I see Howard Chan state that in an interview, I'm going to take that with a grain of salt.
I work for a huge company, people are always wrong, even about topics they should know about ....just because someone works for a company and tells you something, doesn't mean they know what they are talking about.
And you can be sure that even if it is the case for Downey, once the Marvel movies exploded, the merchandise likeness rights would have been tied into the contract the actors are signing. Toy companies are not negotiating individually with Chris Pratt to make Starlord figures or Chris Evans to make Captain America figures.
(Note: an actors approval on the quality of their likeness on a product is different from negotiating the products themselves. That is why we see 'pending final approval' on some products ....although on this end we can't tell in each case whether it is the actor themselves or simply the merchandise department)
Mark Hamill is brought up as an example of someone who wouldn't request as much as Robert Downey?
The Star Wars actors signed away their likeness rights forever in the 1970s. I don't think Hamill would have been involved in the Hot Toys deal.
Actors like Carrie Fisher have joked publicly that she doesn't own her face, George Lucas does (now Disney I guess....)
The idea that Mark Hamill was happy to sign with Hot Toys because he hasn't done a movie for years and 'would probably work for a peanut butter sandwich' is silly. The original trilogy cast worked on % of profit deals .... % of profit from Star Wars movies ....
And then there is this gem:
"Arnold Schwarzenegger who obviously went into politics and didn't do much acting, he probably didn't get paid a huge amount for Terminator 5"
What? Arnie got one of the biggest paycheques of all time for Terminator 3. You think he is working for a lot less now? Or that he is pretending to be a robot again for the love it? I haven't seen info on his deal for this new one but his paycheque and % of profit deal for Terminator 5 will likely be one of the biggest Hollywood has ever seen.
Budget Stark obviously knows about the rising costs of Hong Kong but I question some of the other stuff.
