Home Alone star Daniel Stern took a huge gamble asking for a larger salary before filming the movie’s sequel.
Stern, 66, was initially paid $300,000 for six weeks of work on the original film, according to his Home and Alone memoir, which was released on Tuesday, May 21. The actor played Marv Murchins — one half of the Wet Bandits, alongside Joe Pesci’s Harry Lyme — in the iconic holiday movie, released in 1990.
“I got a call saying they had redone the shooting schedule, and they would now need me for eight weeks instead of six,” he wrote. “They were asking me to add on 33 percent more shooting time, so I asked if they were going to raise my salary the same amount, and they said they would not.”
Questioning the salary led to the film going in a different direction. However, Stern eventually got a call, and producers wanted him to return to the movie. The studio told the veteran actor they would “honor the original contract and make the schedule six weeks.”
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The movie, which cost 20th Century Fox a reported $18 million to make, grossed nearly $500 million worldwide. When it came time for the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Stern was prepared to make more money.
Initially, the actor was offered $600,000.
“Double my original salary, but not quite the pot of gold I was hoping for,” he wrote, noting that he asked whether that was “the same” Pesci was making. “They said it was not,” Stern claimed.
Stern got the studio to raise his salary to $800,000 before learning that Pesci was making “somewhere between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 plus gross percentage of the profits,” he wrote.
At the time, Stern’s agent advised him to take the low salary, but they parted ways because the actor wanted to make more money. Stern asked for $1.5 million and 2 percent of the gross profits. The studio eventually awarded the salary he asked for but only gave him 1 percent of the gross profits.
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“I knew they couldn’t do the movie without me, but I was also insecure, since I almost blew it the first time,” he wrote. “I didn’t want to be too greedy when I loved the movie and the part so much.”
Other than discussing his salary, Stern recalled his overall experience on the film’s set — notably with lead Macaulay Culkin, who played Kevin McCallister.
“He was a sweet kid but had lived a very different life than my kids,” Stern wrote, explaining he took his three children to play with Culkin, now 43, on set. “He didn’t know how to play tag or throw the ball around. He was more of an indoor kid and had a lot of adult pressure on him from show business and parents and such.”
