Success sometimes makes people envious. Money too and Dany Boon, one of the highest paid French actors, has already paid the price…
Dany Boonactor, director, but also Ch’ti favorite of the French, has enjoyed immense success in the cinema since the release in 2008 of his cult comedy Welcome to the Ch’tis. The film, which attracted more than 20 million spectators in theaters, a record, propelled the career of the former comedian to the heights. Thanks to this triumph and the popular comedies that followed, such as Nothing to declare Or SuperchondriacDany Boon has topped the rankings of the highest paid French actors for several years in a row.
Capital magazine estimated a few years ago that Dany Boon received around 990,000 euros in fees per film in which he starred. For Welcome to the Ch’tis, he would have even pocketed a total of 26 million euros by combining his salary and his share of the revenue. All without counting the consequences of the enormous phenomenon of which he was the director, such as La Ch’tite Famille which will follow ten years later, but also the rebroadcasts on television which constitute “an annuity for life” according to observers.
As a director, Dany Boon is doing very well. For his film Superchondriac in 2014, he would have received remuneration of 2 million euros for the production in addition to the 4 million of his actor salary according to the JDD. Two years later, Challenges mentioned 3.5 million euros in fixed remuneration for the film Crazy RAID. It must be said that in addition to the Ch’tis saga, almost all of his films have exceeded one million admissions in France, Nothing to declare in 2010 (more than 8 million entries) Life for real in 2023, for a total of 56 million admissions in France and around the world according to a recent calculation.
At the end of last year, during an exchange with one of the autistic journalists of Papotin meetings, on France 2, Dany Boon acknowledged this success: “I make a lot of money, yes!”, he said frankly, without saying much more. Although his personal fortune has never been revealed, it has still caused him some trouble.
Sharply criticized in a tribune du Monde from 2012, Dany Boon was obliged to correct certain figures, to point out that the cinema cost less money than it brought in and to emphasize that his productions had never been financed by public money, nor even benefited from the advance on receipts set up by the French cinema financing system.
“Talking about actors’ salaries is completely new,” he also regretted to Le Figaro. Dany Boon has also assured several times that he pays his taxes in his native country and in the United States, where he partly resides and where he created a production company more than ten years ago.
Last September, the actor was however accused of having used a tax arrangement to purchase a luxury yacht and thus avoid VAT. The Chained Duck reported that the actor would have created an offshore entity, Ad Illel IBS, domiciled in the Antilles, in the tax haven of Antigua and Barbuda, to buy this 21-meter-long boat for 3.5 million euros. Enough to escape 700,000 euros in VAT on resale according to the satirical weekly.
Accusations to which he once again firmly responded: “The VAT was paid in France and all the taxes and social charges linked to this boat were paid in France,” he assured on social networks.