Huge amount Macaulay Culkin made from Home Alone films as he speaks out on returning for sequel
Macaulay Culkin has made an absolute fortune from the Home Alone films, so it should come as no surprise that he’s hinted he’s open to returning for another of them.
Culkin may have been just 10 years old when he made the first Home Alone, but the child star made $100,000 for his troubles.
The second film in the franchise is where he really started raking in the big bucks, however, due to a unique set of clauses he had in his contract.
The celebrity child actor has been making a recent return to acting after having quit Hollywood at just 14.
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Culkin’s return has seen him appearing in the newly released Zootopia 2, as well as appearing in the trailer for the upcoming season of Fallout, where he looks set to play a major role.
The star also spoke about how he was open to a return for a third Home Alone film starring him, even suggesting his own concept for it, which fans on social media were full of praise for.
Returning for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Culkin was afforded a lot more power in negotiations over money than he was in the first film, partially due to Home Alone making almost half a billion dollars off a budget of just $18 million.
The $476.7 million the film made is the equivalent of a movie making roughly $1.2 billion in 2025, so it was a huge win for the studio.
Culkin was paid $5 million for the second film up front, but his real earnings came in what he negotiated on the back end.
First up was his agreement to receive a percentage of the gross, getting five per cent of everything the film made. This came to $359 million, meaning Culkin made $17.95 million from the film’s success.
He was not the only member of the cast to do this either, with Daniel Stern, who played Marv, initially rejecting a contract offer to return and ending up getting two per cent of the film’s gross.
Culkin,, however,, made even more on the back end through a deal that gave him a percentage of the merchandising.
Speaking on Hot Ones he revealed that the second film was his favourite of the two ‘because he made more money’, before saying: “I think I own five percent of the net. And also 15 per cent of the merchandising.
“So, if you buy a Talkboy I’m like yeah, I’ll take 15 percent of that. Thank you very much. By the way, buy a Talkboy this Christmas.”
The toy voice recorder was a massive commercial success,, with Collider estimating that its 45,000,000 in sales, before its 1999, discontinuation would have made Culkin a whopping $202.5 million.
The money that the former child star was earning, however, ended up causing issues in the long run,, with his parents engaging in a bitter battle over control of his funds when they split up.
This led him, at the age of 14, to remove his parents from a $50 million trust fund.
He previously told Esquire: "Basically, I had millions and millions of dollars in the bank and my mother couldn’t pay the rent because she was spending all of her money on lawyers.
"We were about to get evicted from our apartment. The only way I could get access to that money was to take my father’s name off it, but I didn’t want to make it messy, so I figured I’d take both their names off."
Both his parents received 15 per cent of his earnings from all his films as a child, having acted as his managers during this time.
Topics: Macaulay Culkin, Home Alone, Film, Celebrity, TV and Film, Money
Michael Slavin