Here's How Much the Luffy Actor Earned for Netflix's One Piece
The actor made very good money from the show.
When Netflix announced its plans to adapt the iconic Japanese manga One Piece into a live-action show, fans of the original were vehemently opposed, fearing that the streaming giant would ruin the source material just like it did with Cowboy Bebop. However, the moment the show premiered early last month, the naysayers were proven wrong, and One Piece became an instant hit, getting rave reviews from fans and critics alike.
It seems that even Netflix's producers got caught unawares by how huge the show got: it's still topping the ratings charts in several countries more than a month after its release. Naturally, One Piece's sudden popularity helped its main star, Iñaki Godoy, make some serious money.
Godoy's Pay Revealed
Although it's never been disclosed how big of an advance Godoy got paid before the first season dropped on Netflix, we do know how much the up-and-coming star got after the show's ratings soared into the stratosphere, and the amount is genuinely staggering.
Godoy got paid $320,000 per episode, meaning that he earned a total of $2.5 million for the season, an insane amount for an actor this young. And remember, we're talking about someone who was a complete unknown prior to One Piece, and the fact that he got A-list compensation for his very first big role made fans really happy for the actor.
More Than Another Netflix Superstar
Because Godoy's success came so quickly, people didn't hesitate to compare him to Millie Bobby Brown, who also became a huge star practically overnight thanks to the success of Stranger Things but who never made nearly as much money from her inaugural project as Godoy did from his.
Brown was paid a very modest $30,000 per episode for the first two seasons of Stranger Things, even as the series was breaking viewership records around the world and becoming a huge pop culture phenomenon.
Perhaps it's a sign that the streaming landscape has changed dramatically, and big streaming platforms like Netflix now have a lot more cash to play around with than they did in the early days, so now they can afford to offer their rising stars highly competitive compensation packages, and perhaps Godoy should thus be grateful that he got discovered later rather than sooner.