Grand Theft Auto IV Makes $600m. Lead Actor Makes $100k! Ridiculous...

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3 points·berecruited··7 comments

They made a conscious decision to not go after mainstream Hollywood talent this time. They needed it for credibility and marketing in the past but at this point the GTAIV marketing machine did just fine without Samuel J Jackson or Ray Liotta doing voices. Talented voice actors are a much better deal than A-list Hollywood talent for voice acting. The real shame is that voice actors are so underpaid by the market. Billy West, who voices Fry and many more on Futurama, has talked about this in various forms of media.

Great point... The roles are VERY different:

In film, the voice actor is often used for marketing (ie Jack Black in Panda kung-fu film)

In TV, they tend to really drive the show (Family Guy, Futurama, etc)

In video games, it's a complete non-factor unless you're John Madden.

This guy is completely delusional... people would play the game if my little sister did the voice overs.

hen they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games.

I wonder if he realizes what would happen if their union actually tried to enforce such an agreement. The video game industry, unlike the film and TV industries, can easily walk away from using union talent at all.

He got exactly the amount of money he requested. $100K is a lot of money considering that there are thousands of others that would have done the same work for a fraction of that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/arts/television/21gta.html...

This guy is going to be a Screen Actor's Guild hero; his career is set.

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