David Krumholtz, who played Bernard the Elf in 1994’s The Santa Clause, has revealed how much he still earns from the Christmas classic.
Krumholtz, 48, who appeared alongside Tim Allen as Scott Calvin in the first film, returned for the 2002 sequel, The Santa Clause 2, but didn’t appear in the franchise’s 2006 installment, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. He said in 2021 that he skipped the third movie because he felt like his character was “devalued a bit” in the script.
More than 30 years after the first film’s debut, Krumholtz has opened up about the payments he continues to receive from the franchise.
“They’re minimal because the movie plays so much,” he said about the checks during an interview with Page Six last month at the press day for the Off-Broadway revival of Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. “This is how residuals work: every time it plays, you make less. It’s a grade scale.”
Krumholtz — who appeared in the 2022 Disney+ series The Santa Clauses — said that when he first received residual payments for the holiday films, they were “good.” However, he has now estimated that he gets only “150 bucks a year.”
The 10 Things I Hate About You alum guessed that he’s earning more in residual checks from his appearance in the hit 2023 Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer. When asked how much he makes from that film, he jokingly responded: “That’s none of your business! What kind of question is that?”
However, he then added: “It’s $12.73. It’s enough to buy a hot dog in New York.”
Negotiated by unions, residuals are long-term payments for reruns and other airings of films and television shows after their initial release. They have been a hot-button topic in the industry in recent years following the rise of streaming services that have acquired network shows, causing residuals to shrink considerably.
Last month, The Brady Bunch actor Eve Plumb revealed that she and her co-stars do not receive residuals from reruns of the beloved sitcom.
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“If I had a dime for every rerun episode, I’d pay off the national deficit,” she wrote in her new memoir, Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond. “I don’t.”
Despite the show ending more than 50 years ago, episodes have remained in near-constant syndication, with reruns typically airing on cable networks MeTV and Catchy Comedy.
