This Hollywood actor lost $250 million after he turned down the offer of 10% of “Avatar” profit

Director James Cameron’s film “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which returned 13 years after the prequel, is creating a global sensation.

On Dec 20th (local time), on the British daily Metro, James Cameron, the director of the legendary SF film “Avatar”, shared how an A-list actor turned down the offer to appear in “Avatar” and how that actor must be shedding tears of regret at the moment.

According to the article, director James Cameron recently implored Hollywood star actor Matt Damon to “stop beating himself up.” The reason why James Cameron said this to Matt Damon dated back 13 years ago.

Particularly, James Cameron offered to give Matt Damon 10% of the box office profits for him to star in the movie “Avatar.” However, Matt Damon, who was filming the “Bourne” series at the time, rejected James Cameron’s offer.

This soon proved to be a mistake of Matt Damon because the total profit of “Avatar” exceeded $2.8 billion as the movie became an explosive hit worldwide. In fact, no recently released film has been able to surpass “Avatar”‘s profit.

Under the terms of the offered contract, Matt Damon would have earned $250 million, or 10% of the movie’s total revenue. However, he refused this offer from James Cameron.

In 2021, Matt Damon drew attention at the Cannes Film Festival as he said, “I will go down in history. You will never meet an actor who turned down more money.”

Regarding Matt Damon’s refusal to appear in “Avatar”, director James Cameron said, “He’s beating himself up over this. Matt, you’re kind of like one of the biggest movie stars in the world, get over it. 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,” drawing laughter.

Meanwhile, actor Sam Worthington plays the male lead role of “Avatar”, which Matt Damon rejected.

Source: Insight