Eva Longoria has revealed that she made at least $12m (£9.2m) from investing in John Wick, after saving the film from being shelved 24 hours before it was due to start filming.
The action films, which follow a hitman who is reluctant to return to the work after retiring, have gone on to gross $1bn across four movies. But they almost weren’t made at all after the creators found themselves $6m short.
Directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch revealed that the Desperate Housewives star “came to the rescue”, and that the investment “paid back significantly for her”.
Now, Longoria, 49, has said she is still receiving cheques for the movie, ten years after it was first made.
“Yes,” she confirmed when asked if she was still being paid off the investment.
“What I’m p***ed off about is I wasn’t connected to the rest of them,” she told Business Insider. “This was a one-time thing. That was the gamble. But that was my only mistake, not being attached to all of the films.”
Although Longoria was not involved in the movie’s sequels, she said of her total earnings: “You know, I would have to check. More than double [$6 million], for sure.”
Starring Keanu Reeves who also invested in the movie, John Wick (2014) was followed by John Wick: Chapter 2 in 2017, John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum in 2019, and John Wick: Chapter 4, last year.
The star explained that she did not know anything about investing when she made the decision to do so.
“That is accurate. By the way, I was in my infancy,” Longoria said as she confirmed she had in fact saved the film.
“My bankroll was very new, and it was a lot of money, and I was like, ‘So how does it work?’ I had no idea. I would love to say I was an investment genius and I just knew and I calculated my risk. No, none of that.
“An agent, and he wasn’t even my agent, he called me and said, ‘You got money, you should put your money here’.”
She continued, “I didn’t even know how a movie was made. I was like, ‘What do you mean gap financing?’ But something that I’ve learned, looking back, I love investing in people.
“You can tell me you’re opening a chicken farm, but if you’re fucking passionate about it and you’ve done the work and know the market, I mean, [directors Stahelski and Leitch] did their work. They put in their 10,000 hours as stunt guys and second unit directors; they had seen all the bad movies and knew how to make a good one. It was that. They were undeniably passionate and I knew they were going to make an undeniable product.”
