Leslie Jones revealed she was initially offered only $67,000 to star in 2016’s Ghostbusters, while her co-star Melissa McCarthy made $14 million.
Per Variety, in an excerpt of Jones’ new novel, Leslie F*cking Jones: A Memoir (published by Rolling Stone) the Saturday Night Live star revealed she was paid significantly less for playing a role in 2016’s Ghostbusters compared to her co-stars.
“It was made clear to me at times during the process that I was lucky to even be on that movie, but honestly, I was thinking, ‘I don’t have to be in this muthafucka,’ especially as I got paid way less than Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig,” Jones said. “No knock on them, but my first offer was to do that movie for $67,000. I had to fight to get more (in the end I got $150K), but the message was clear: ‘This is gonna blow you up — after this, you’re made for life,’ all that kind of shit, as though I hadn’t had decades of a successful career already.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ghostbusters had a budget of approximately $154 million. McCarthy earned $14 million for starring in the movie, while director Paul Feig earned more than $10 million.
Directed and co-written by Feig, the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot starred McCarthy, Wiig, Jones, and Kate McKinnon. While the film received generally positive reviews from critics, racist and sexist trolls targeted the movie for featuring an all-female cast, to the point where Jones had to delete her Twitter account for 24 hours.
“I can’t believe anyone would do this shit to someone, anyone, for working,” Jones says in her memoir. “This is awful. I am in a movie. Death threats for something as small as that?”
Jones responds to Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters comments
In 2019, Jason Reitman said Ghostbusters: Afterlife (released in 2021 as a direct sequel to 1984’s Ghostbusters and 1989’s Ghostbusters II) was an attempt to “go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans” when speaking on Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast.
Reitman later clarified he didn’t have an ill will towards 2016’s Ghostbusters and called it an “amazing movie” on Twitter; however, Jones’ memoir still calls the initial comment “unforgivable.”
“The damage was done,” she said. “Bringing up the idea of giving the movie ‘back to the fans’ was a pretty clear shout-out to all those losers who went after us for making an all-female film.”
