Jewish comedian Adam Sandler was Hollywood’s highest earner in 2023
Netflix subscribers spent 500 million hours watching the actor’s movie catalog during the first half of last year, according to Forbes
Jewish funnyman Adam Sandler was the highest-paid actor of 2023, raking in a whopping $73 million from three movies and 44 stand-up comedy shows, Forbes Magazine reported Wednesday in a round-up of Hollywood’s top earners.
The majority of Sandler’s 2023 income came from his lucrative deals with streaming giant Netflix, according to the report, which has worked with the comedian since 2014 and hosts an extensive catalog of his work.
In 2023, his production company Happy Madison Productions released three movies for Netflix — “Murder Mystery 2,” the animated movie “Leo” and “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.”
The most successful of his ventures in 2023 was undoubtedly “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” a coming-of-age story starring Sandler and his real-life wife and daughters.
The movie received a 91 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the reviews aggregator site.
That means 91% of online reviewers surveyed by the site had an overall positive reaction to the film. In comparison, Murder Mystery 2 received a 43% fresh rating, while Leo received 59%.
Though not as popular among viewers, the other two movies were still lucrative for Sandler. According to Forbes, in the three months following the release of Murder Mystery 2, Netflix reported that it ranked in the streaming service’s Top 10 movies across 90 countries and had been watched for a total of 173 million hours worldwide.
“Leo,” in which Sandler voiced a 74-year-old reptile of that name, was nominated for three awards and won best animated family film at the 2024 Family Family Film Awards.
These three projects, combined with Netflix subscribers consuming more than 500 million hours worth of his movies in the first half of 2023 alone, have seen him take home the title of highest-paid actor of 2023 by a considerable margin, according to Forbes.
The business magazine said the second highest-earning actor of 2023 was Margot Robbie, best known for playing the titular role in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” who took home an estimated $59 million. Her co-star Ryan Gosling came in fourth place on the Forbes list, coming after Tom Cruise with a cool $43 million.
JTA and Gabe Friedman contributed to this report.
