Arnold Schwarzenegger has revealed his most lucrative film project to date — and no, it’s not one of the Terminator movies.
Schwarzenegger, 77, was asked which of his movies earned him the biggest paycheck and how much he made during his Monday, June 23, appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.
“It was Twins. Because we had gotten no money, no salary, but ownership — a piece of the back end,” the Austrian-American actor explained. “It was fantastic. We went all the way to the bank with that one.”
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Cohen, 57, asked if Schwarzenegger made “more than $20 million” from the 1988 film, to which he jokingly responded, “Oh yeah, much more than that. Come on. What’s the matter with you today?”
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“More than $40 million?” Cohen asked.
Schwarzenegger replied, “It was more than that. It was more than any movie I’ve ever made. Let’s put it this way.”
Twins was a buddy comedy film starring Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as a pair of unlikely fraternal twin brothers separated at birth. Both stars, along with director Ivan Reitman, made an agreement with the studio to collectively take 40 percent of the film’s box office and rental returns instead of a traditional salary. Their gamble paid off, as the movie grossed $216 million worldwide and earned each of them massive paychecks.
Schwarzenegger opened up about what led him to take the deal in a 2016 appearance on In Depth with Graham Bensinger.
“I was so convinced that I would be great in a comedy. But I also understood the limits [that the studios had], because the studios told me every time I [did] a movie that the movies make huge money. So it was only natural to offer me another action movie. Play it safe,” he said.
Though Schwarzenegger said he “understood” that big box office action flicks were what the “audience” wanted to see him do, he wanted to take a shot at something different. He decided that he would make studios feel “comfortable investing” in him by investing in himself.
“Don’t give me any money. Nothing. Just pay for the production,” he continued, later adding, “It was the best investment we ever made.”
“It became such a historic deal that the studio never, ever made that deal again,” Schwarzenegger concluded.
A sequel, called Triplets, was announced in March 2012. Eddie Murphy had been set to star as Schwarzenegger and DeVito’s long-lost triplet, and Reitman was set to co-produce. However, Schwarzenegger said that the project was canceled after Reitman died in February 2022.
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“[His son] Jason Reitman literally stopped the project when his father died. His father wanted to do it really badly. I wanted to do it really badly,” Schwarzenegger told The Hollywood Reporter in May 2023. “Danny DeVito wanted to do it really badly. We had the financing.”
In his WWHL interview, Schwarzenegger also spoke about his famous Terminator franchise and revealed which of the six films he thought was the worst.
“I would say the worst was probably No. 4 [Terminator Salvation] because that was done during the time I was governor and I was not in it,” he explained. “Does that make sense? How do you do a Terminator movie without me being in a Terminator movie, right? Doesn’t make any sense.”
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