James McAvoy says M. Night Shyamalan’s Split is still the only film in his career that really consistently pays him residuals. He made the comment on the Happy Sad Confused podcast on Oct. 15, and he tied that steady income to a movie that opened like a small-budget gamble and ended up as a major commercial hit.
Split and the $6 million gamble
McAvoy said Split was made for about $6 million, then added, “In our first weekend, we made 40 [million],” a number that helps explain why the film kept generating checks. He also said the movie eventually reached $278.5 million worldwide, a scale that most low-budget horror films never touch. For an actor, that kind of run can create long-tail income that outlasts the release cycle by years.
He did not describe a windfall from every project. “I very rarely see anything from anything,” he said, before adding that the checks that do arrive can be tiny: “You get the odd check for like, a couple hundred quid here. Sometimes you get checks for 25 cents and you're like, ‘It literally costs more to post this than it did for me to cash it.’”
Backend deals and residual checks
McAvoy said the bigger residuals usually come from films with backend deals, which is the part of an agreement that ties compensation to a movie’s financial performance after release. That helps explain why Split stands out in his filmography: a low-budget title with a strong box office run can keep generating payments long after a one-time salary is forgotten.
He said the first residual check from Split was “bonkers,” a reaction that fits the numbers he gave. If a $6 million production can pull in $40 million in its opening weekend and $40.2 million in its first week, the revenue structure has room to keep feeding downstream payouts.
Awards season left it out
McAvoy also said Split was largely shut out of awards season, and he was not bothered by that outcome. “I didn't think it would get welcomed into that sphere much,” he said, adding, “It's getting a wee bit different now, but I wasn't bothered.” The movie’s commercial life, not its awards profile, is what has kept paying him.
He also noted that horror performances are getting more recognition now, and he said he played eight different versions of his character in Split. The unanswered business question is not whether the film worked — it did — but what specific contract structure made this one title the outlier in a career where even a few hundred quid is usually the exception.
