James McAvoy says Split is the only film that regularly pays him residuals. “The only one that really consistently pays me is Split,” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with host Josh Horowitz, according to SSBCrack and IANS.
First, What Is a Residual?
Residuals are payments made to performers, writers and directors when a film or show they worked on is reused after its initial release, such as when it is shown on television, sold on home video or streamed. The amounts depend on the agreements governing each project and the way the work is exploited, which is why two films can produce very different checks for the same actor. McAvoy’s comments make that point in everyday terms: one title keeps paying while most of the others deliver very little.
A Check After One Weekend
“Our first residual check came at the end of the first weekend. It was bonkers,” McAvoy said. He explained that the film was already in profit, according to IANS via MENAFN.
The detail that a payment arrived so soon after release stands out because residuals are usually associated with later reuse of a film rather than its debut. McAvoy’s explanation, as reported, is that the film had already made a profit by the end of its first weekend. The reports do not describe the contractual mechanism that triggered the early payment, so that part of the story is left to his own account.
The Numbers He Remembered
McAvoy gave rough figures from memory: a budget of “like $6 million,” about $30 million spent on advertising and an opening weekend of about $40 million. MENAFN notes these are his own approximations.
If those recollections are close, the arithmetic shows why the film worked so well financially. A production budget of around $6 million combined with roughly $30 million in marketing implies a total outlay near $36 million, and an opening weekend of about $40 million would have exceeded that figure in just three days. The numbers should be read as an actor’s memory, not as audited figures, and the reports are careful to say so.
Shyamalan’s Low-Budget Playbook
He credited director M. Night Shyamalan for the film's efficiency. He said Shyamalan made Split and Glass on modest budgets and stayed focused, according to SSBCrack. In Split, McAvoy plays a kidnapper with 23 personalities, and he returned to the role in Glass.
Split reached theaters in 2017, and Glass followed in 2019 as part of a connected group of films that also includes Shyamalan’s earlier Unbreakable. The approach McAvoy describes, controlling costs and keeping the story contained, is a recognizable part of how the director has worked on several of his thrillers. For everyone involved, a film that earns back its costs quickly changes the financial picture of the project, and McAvoy’s account suggests that the benefit reached him as a performer. The reports do not say how his own deal was structured, so that remains his description alone.
The Other Checks
Other films pay far less, he said. McAvoy told Horowitz he gets sporadic checks from his other work, sometimes as small as 25 cents, and joked that mailing them can cost more than they are worth. SSBCrack says he also mentioned Wanted in this context.
The contrast is the heart of the story. McAvoy has appeared in a long list of films over many years, including large studio productions, and yet by his account only one of them pays him regularly. A 25-cent check is a striking example, because it shows how little a title can generate once the main period of earnings has passed. The joke about postage reflects a real feature of the system, in which payments can be tiny even when the film itself was widely seen.
What the Comments Suggest
McAvoy’s remarks do not claim that residuals are unimportant or that his other films were unsuccessful. They describe a situation in which the financial outcome of an individual project depends heavily on how it was budgeted, marketed and released. Split is his example of a film where those elements lined up unusually well, and the fact that he still receives payments from it years after its release shows how that early success has continued to affect him.
Why It Resonates
Discussions about actors’ pay often focus on large upfront salaries, so a story about small checks and a single standout title offers a different view of the business. McAvoy’s account, delivered on a podcast in a lighthearted tone, shows both the unpredictability of income from film work and the lasting value of a project that performs well at the start. The reports cited here do not include any figures for how much he has earned from Split in total, so his comments remain a description of the pattern rather than a precise accounting.