James McAvoy says M. Night Shyamalan’s Split is still the one film in his career that regularly sends him money. Speaking on the Oct. 15 episode of Happy Sad Confused, the 47-year-old actor said the 2016 thriller continues to stand apart from the rest of his filmography because the residual checks keep coming back.
That in itself is unusual enough. McAvoy said he very rarely sees anything from anything, and when checks do arrive, they can be tiny — sometimes 25 cents. So when Split pays, it is not just recurring income. It is the exception that proves the rule, and the actor made clear he knows exactly why that film has stayed alive in the system long after its release.
The reason is simple math. McAvoy said he thought Split was made for about $6 million, then pointed to the film’s opening weekend, when it made $40 million. The movie ultimately took in $278.5 million worldwide, turning a modest production into a major hit. For an actor whose residuals are otherwise sporadic, that kind of box office performance can keep a film generating payments far longer than the average project.
McAvoy’s comments also underline a more awkward truth about the movie’s history. He said Split was largely shut out of awards season, even though he played a man with dissociative identity disorder and portrayed eight different versions of the same character. He said he did not expect the film to be warmly received by the awards world, and he was not bothered when that happened a decade ago. The movie made money, but the recognition never matched the box office.
What McAvoy did not spell out is the deal structure behind the checks. Residuals are generally rare for him unless a contract has a backend component, and he did not explain why Split keeps paying differently from the rest. But the point of his answer was clear: after a decade, Split remains the rare project that still shows up in his mailbox, and the size of the first check was enough for him to remember it as bonkers.
