Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have a friendship so suspiciously inseparable that the internet has practically cast them in a secret relationship they are allegedly hiding from the world. The jokes aside, the longtime friends have known each other since young adulthood and worked together for decades. So, naturally, while reviewing their friendship, the internet has again come across Matt Damon's revelation about Affleck's The Town paycheck, which reportedly did not even reach a million dollars.

For a film that proved both a critical darling and commercial winner, The Town hardly treated Affleck like its biggest beneficiary.

Six months ago, the Kelce brothers welcomed Matt Damon to New Heights, turning the podcast into a rather entertaining meeting of Hollywood and NFL royalty. During the conversation, Damon discussed Artists Equity, the studio he co-founded with Ben Affleck, and why creators should retain rights to work they helped build. Naturally, Affleck’s The Town became the perfect cautionary tale.

“He was on a flat salary I don’t even think he made a million bucks for that movie.” Damon’s revelation is wild considering The Town was a September 2010 hit that grossed $154 million worldwide on a $37 million budget. Affleck directed, co-wrote, and starred in the gritty Boston crime thriller, while Jeremy Renner earned an Academy Award nomination.

That disparity is exactly why Damon brought up reversion rights on New Heights, arguing that major creative contributors should benefit when their work keeps generating money. The conversation turns Affleck’s surprisingly small payday into more than Hollywood trivia. It becomes a neat little example of why Damon and Affleck wanted Artists Equity to change the rules.

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If Damon and Affleck can somehow know about The Odyssey casting before Damon’s wife, they can certainly learn from their old Hollywood paycheck mistakes with Artists Equity.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck seem to have learned an expensive Hollywood lesson from The Town: being the person who writes, directs, and stars in a hit does not guarantee a spectacular payday. With Artists Equity, the longtime collaborators flipped that script, building a model around controlled upfront salaries and meaningful backend participation rather than simply collecting traditional production fees.

Air offered the first major proof of concept, with the $90 million worldwide grosser helping establish the company’s equity-driven approach. Then The Rip took the experiment into streaming territory, with Netflix agreeing to performance-based bonuses after its enormous viewership, allowing all 1,200 cast and crew members to receive additional compensation. Artists Equity has since expanded its leverage through major Netflix and Sony Pictures partnerships, proving the company can turn hits into a sustainable business rather than another Hollywood vanity project.

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Did you expect Ben Affleck to earn less than a million dollars for The Town? Let us know in the comments!