Today, Amber’s legal team called entertainment industry consultant Kathryn Arnold to testify in the ongoing Depp vs. Heard mutual defamation lawsuit.
Johnny Depp filed a defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard after she wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2018 describing how an ex-boyfriend abused her. Lawyers for Johnny Depp claim that the op-ed in Virginia, where the Post is published, caused serious harm to his career and earning potential even though he wasn’t named in the piece. He’s looking for $50 million.
After Amber, this is Depp’s THIRD defamation lawsuit. This is the first time he’s taken legal action against her directly. The Sun’s publisher, News Group Newspapers, was sued by Johnny in the United Kingdom in 2018 for calling him a “wife beater” in an April 2018 article.
In 2020, the case went to trial. It took Heard and Depp several days of testimony to make their cases. 12 of 14 incidents of violence that Heard alleged to have experienced were found to be “substantially true” by a judge in 2020. In March 2021, Depp’s appeal was denied.
Adam Waldman was one of Johnny’s attorneys between the years of 2019 and 2020. When asked about the abuse claims made by Amber in an interview with the Daily Mail in 2020, Waldman said that they were “false.”
For Waldman’s statements, Amber has counter-sued Johnny for $100,000,000.
Today, Amber’s lawyers were hoping to use Kathryn Arnold. An entertainment industry consultant, to prove that Waldman’s statements and the subsequent social media firestorm that the statements supposedly sparked caused Amber’s career to suffer greatly.
According to Kathryn Arnold at least $45-50 million in potential film, television and endorsement income was lost.
According to Kathryn Arnold, Amber Heard earned $1 million for the first “Aquaman” film and was contractually guaranteed $2 million. If there was a sequel and $4 million if there was a third. Actor Jason Momoa reportedly earned $3-5 million for the first film and was promised $5 million for the sequel. Her co-star. Arnold testified that Jason Momoa’s representatives were able to break his contract and negotiate a pay raise to $15 million for the sequel after Aquaman earned over $1 billion at the box office.
That said, Arnold claims that the inflammatory statements made by Waldman triggered a “snowball effect” of negative press. That bubbled up just as Amber was in the best position to negotiate a similar major pay raise for the second Aquaman. This meant Amber had to accept the contractually agreed upon $2 million payday instead of the $10 million that she could have earned.
L’Oreal offered Amber a two-year, $1.5 million contract at the same time as this. During L’Oreal’s negative PR firestorm, the campaign appears to have been put on hold.
For her work on “The Stand,” for which she received $200,000 per episode, Amber was also earning a salary of $200,000.
Despite Waldman’s statements, Kathryn Arnold claims that Amber has not received any major studio film roles, endorsement contracts, or television show roles since then. But, as Arnold points out, a number of other actors who had similar careers to Amber at the time of Aquamann’s success have gone on to earn millions in film, television, and endorsements. As part of her research, Arnold compared the performances of five actors she considered to be comparable.
- Jason Momoa
- Gal Gadot
- Ana de Armas
- Zendaya
- Chris Pine
After the success of Aquaman, Arnold claimed that an actress like Amber Heard should have been able to raise her base salary to $10 million in three to five years, and that would have been her new base salary. Four more endorsement deals outside of the makeup/beauty category should also have been possible for her. Additionally, she should have been able to sign deals for additional TV series at much higher episode salaries.
According to Kathryn Arnold, Amber should have earned $45-50 million over a period of three to five years.
Amber Heard current net worth is estimated at $2.5 million. In our estimation, Johnny Depp has a net worth of $150 million.