A-LIST 20 million fees often from Netflix, The Rock biggest star

I've frequently cited the rough figure of $20m to hire a true A-lister to star in a movie, and figures just released bear this out. Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Adam Wahlberg all hit this mark recently.

The big surprise comes from who's paying these fees - yes, Disney's name pops up but it's Netflix which is responsible for around 25% of the fees recorded in the annual Forbes report.

Note that they issue separate reports, a week apart, for male and female stars. This article therefore only considers the male stars.

The Adam Sandler case shows the rise of the exclusive production contract too - a throwback to the era when studios controlled stars under exclusive contracts, but with the power reversed. Also comparable with the Vegas residencies by the likes of Britney Spears in the music industry.

$250m for four Adam Sandler movies, in a world where Ed Sheeran is of equivalent standing in the music industry - we live in truly dark times. But I commend reading this short article to grow your grasp of the film biz and it's warped star economics!

Dwayne Johnson tops Forbes list of world's highest-paid male actors.