Mark Wahlberg is sitting on top of the Rock on Forbes’ 2017 highest-paid actors list.

The rapper-turned-actor earned an estimated $68 million (Dh249.7 million) between June 2016 and June 2017, the financial mag reported Tuesday, edging out last year’s top earner, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

That figure sums up the Boston native’s paydays from the forthcoming comedy Daddy’s Home 2 and action flick Transformers: The Last Knight, plus earnings from his AT&T endorsement deal and his family’s A&E reality series, Wahlburgers. Incidentally, his Transformers outing was the lowest-grossing film of the franchise to date.

Johnson dropped to the No. 2 spot this year with $65 million, thanks to earnings from his tent-pole films Baywatch and Jumanji. That’s still a modest improvement from the Fate of the Furious star and producer’s $64.5 million payout from 2016, which saw him displace three-time list-topper Robert Downey Jr.

Speaking of Iron Man, the Avengers star dropped to the No. 6 spot this year with $48 million. However, his Marvel Cinematic Universe brethren — Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Chris Pratt and Vin Diesel — all placed in the magazine’s top 20.

Diesel, who also served as F8’s star and producer and voiced baby Groot in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, clinched this year’s No. 3 spot with $54.5 million.

Despite Adam Sandler’s critically maligned Netflix films, his lucrative production deal with the streaming service kept him in the top five. The comedian landed in the fourth spot on the list by earning an estimated $50.4 million.

Just behind him is Chinese action star Jackie Chan, who earned an estimated $49 million. Downey, Tom Cruise and Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar rounded out the top 10.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the actors still significantly outearn their female counterparts. La La Land star and Oscar winner Emma Stone topped Forbes’ list of highest-paid actresses last week, but her earnings — $26 million, compared with Wahlberg’s $68 million — further highlight Hollywood’s wage gap.

The top 10 actors banked a cumulative $488.5 million — nearly three times as much as the $172.5 million combined total of the 10 top-earning women, Forbes noted.

The three highest-paid actresses — Stone, Hunger Games and X-Men star Jennifer Lawrence and Friends alum Jennifer Aniston — were the only ones to pocket more than $20 million within a year. Meanwhile, 16 actors surpassed that mark on Tuesday’s list.

Forbes tallies the estimated earnings based on data from Nielsen, ComScore, Box Office Mojo, IMDB and interviews with industry insiders. All figures are pretax and before fees for agents, managers and lawyers are deducted.

source Gulf NEWS