Bryce Dallas Howard says she was paid ‘so much less’ than co-star Chris Pratt for the Jurassic World franchise.
Jurassic World is a trilogy of films that follow on from Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies, released from 1993 to 2001.
The franchise centers on disastrous attempts to create cloned dinosaurs from prehistoric DNA.
The first Jurassic World film (2015) is estimated to have made a staggering $1.6 billion worldwide, and at the time of its release was the third-highest-grossing film of all time.
Howard and Pratt were cast as leads in the sci-fi action movies, signing deals for the trilogy that included Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World Dominion.
Despite the trilogy being so high-profile, Howard says she was ‘at a great disadvantage’ when it came to her salary.
In the follow-up series, 22 years have passed and Jurassic World, a dinosaur theme park, now exists.
Howard plays the role of Claire Dearing, a workaholic operations manager and one of the scientists researching the dinosaurs.
Since becoming a household name, Howard has spoken about her time filming the Jurassic World movies, and how she was paid significantly less than her male co-star.
A 2019 study, by Dr. Sofia Sanchez, John S. Heywood, and Maria Navarro Paniagua, uncovered a gender pay gap in Hollywood.
It found that ‘female stars earned on average $2.2m less per film,’ however, a myriad of factors were taken into account, such as the movie’s genre and the actor’s overall popularity.
Sharing her own experiences, Howard told Insider: “When I started negotiating for Jurassic, it was 2014, and it was a different world, and I was at a great disadvantage. And, unfortunately, you have to sign up for three movies, and so your deals are set.”
