Harry Potter’s Golden Trio Paychecks In The Beginning & Finale (And J. K. Rowling’s, Too)
The Harry Potter film saga has brought Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint not only worldwide fame, but also fabulous salaries. In 2009, Dan and Emma were even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actors of the decade.
Here's how much the Golden Trio earned in the first and last movies.
Rupert Grint –
Rupert Grint, who played the role of Ron Weasley, received less than one million for filming in The Sorcerer’s Stone. With each new movie, the actor's salary increased several times. So if Rupert received $4 million for filming Order of the Phoenix, then two parts of Deathly Hallows earned him $30 million.
Emma Watson –
Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, received the same pay check as Rupert for the first movie, which was less than $1 million. Just like Rupert's, her salary increased throughout the franchise, peaking in the finale – Emma earned $30 million for both Deathly Hollows. In one of the interviews, Watson admitted that it took some time for her to realize what a huge fortune she had made.
Daniel Radcliffe – $1M/$50M
The eight films earned star Daniel Radcliffe about $100 million. The actor was paid $1 million for filming Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, $3 million for The Chamber of Secrets, and $6 million for Prisoner of Azkaban. And the final three installments earned him $25 million each. In the end, Daniel earned about $99 million.
J.K. Rowling – $1.3M/$1.1B
But the person who may have made the most money from the Boy Who Lived franchise is, of course, J. K. Rowling. The first book was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 1997 with a print run of only 500 copies. It is known that the publisher paid Rowling an advance of just over $1,000.
In the same year, the US publisher Scholastic Press bought the rights to the novel for $105,000. Two years later, Rowling sold the movie rights to the first four books to Warner Bros. for $1.3 million. Five years later, in 2004, Forbes named Rowling the first author to become a dollar billionaire.
In 2019, Rowling topped the list of highest-paid writers. The list was compiled by calculating her income from the sale of 2.8 million copies of books, profits from theme parks and box office receipts from the latest film adaptations. The total income then amounted to $92 million.
In 2021, J. K. Rowling's total net worth was estimated at $1.1 billion.