Adam McKay was born on the 17th April 1968, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and is a director, film producer, screenwriter as well as a comedian and an actor. He is widely known for his collaborations with Will Ferrell which include movies “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (2004), “Step Brothers” (2008), “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” (2013) as well as for 2015 biographical drama “The Big Short”.
Have you ever wondered how much wealth this multi-talented personality of the moviemaking industry has accumulated so far? How rich Adam McKay is? According to sources, it is estimated that the total of Adam McKay’s net worth, as of early 2017, exceeds the sum of $40 million, acquired largely through his producing career which has been active since 1986.
Adam McKay Net Worth $40 million
Adam was born into the family of a waitress and a bass guitar player. He attended Great Valley High School after which he enrolled at Pennsylvania State University, later transferring to Temple University, but dropped out just a year later. Subsequently, Adam and several friends founded the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. He later joined Chicago’s The Second City, an improvisational comedy group for which he wrote and performed the “Piñata Full of Bees” play. These ventures provided the basis for Adam McKay’s current net worth, and introduced him to the world of comedy and moviemaking.
In 1995, Adam was cast as a behind-the-camera crew member of “Saturday Night Live”, for which he provided screenplays and sketches. After leaving SNL in 2001, Adam teamed up with famous actor and comedian Will Ferrell and they wrote “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” which hit the theatres in 2004, becoming a huge commercial success, earning over $90 million at the box office. This successful collaboration continued as McKay directed “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” (2006), “Step Brothers” (2008) and “The Other Guys” (2010) as well as the sequel in the Anchorman franchise – “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” which was released in 2013 and managed to beat the success of the first part, earning an impressive sum of $173.6 million at the box office. All these accomplishments have helped Adam McKay to dramatically increase his net worth.
In 2013, Adam McKay directed the dark fantasy thriller “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” featuring Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner in the title roles. In 2015, for his work on the biographical drama about mid-2000s Wall Street financial crash – “The Big Short” with Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell in the leading roles, Adam McKay was honored with several prestigious rewards including an Oscar, BAFTA and Writers Guild of America Awards, among over a dozen of others. All these accomplishments helped Adam McKay to further increase his net worth.
Some other notable writing, directing and/or producing engagements of Adam McKay include, apart from all those already mentioned above, movies “The Dictator” (2012), “Get Hard” (2015), “Ant-Man” (2015), “The Brothers Grimsby” (2016) and “Toni Erdmann” (2016) as well as the TV series “The Spoils of Babylon” and “Drunk History” to name a few.
When it comes to his personal life, Adam McKay has been married since 1999 to a actress and stage director, a sister of Jeremy Piven, Shira Piven with whom Adam has two children. It has been publically acknowledged that he is diagnosed with an essential tremor.
Academy Award for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, WGA Award for Best Comedy/Variety - (Including Talk) Series - Television, Best Sports Movie ESPY Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted...
Nominations
Academy Award for Best Director, Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture, BAFTA Award for Best Direction, Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, AACTA International Award for Best Direction, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing - Variety ...
Movies
The Big Short 2015 Anchorman: The Legend o... 2004 Step Brothers 2008 Ant‑Man 2015 The Other Guys 2010
[observation, 2013 on Roger Ebert] How much we miss him. He wrote the worst review of anything I've ever done. And it was so great! We don't care. When you do comedy, you get impervious to good and bad reviews. It was 'Step Brothers' and he claimed it was 'the sign of the end of Western civilization'.
2
[on performing comedy] Well, you kind of start with the premise of 'it makes us laugh', and there's a bit of checking in with the crowd. Will [Ferrell] and I write our own sense of humor. We've been doing it for a long time so there is some adjustment going on that we're not conscious of. There's some awareness that there's an audience that is going to see it. You're not completely out there. You put it up and, much like horror -in horror and comedy - the audience really has to go with you. So we don't mind losing 'em for stretches. We don't mind throwing something at 'em that they outright don't like, but that you want them to be with some of the movie.. You pick your moments to go 'Screw the audience' and you pick up you moments where you need the audience. You're trying to do something that's still something that makes us laugh, for this part where we need the audience. That's the game of comedy.
3
[on 'Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues'] With sequels you often see these inflated test scores. I said, 'I don't ever want this movie to get over a 90'. I want 10% of the crowd NOT to like the movie'. You want the majority to be into it, but that was literally our mission. Let's not get too lovable with this. Let's make sure we sing a love song to a shark. We open our movie with a shark attack. It's not standard storytelling.
4
[paying homage to vintage comedies] Scattershot, ensemble comedy in which it's all different kinds of comedy - it's absurd, it's edgy, it's dry - that's my favorite kind of stuff. 'Airplane!' was the one for me. I was in sixth grade, and I remember going to see that movie seven times and just tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard. 'Boy Trapped in Refrigerator Eats Own Foot' - I've had conversations with numerous people who say that joke was a turning point in their life.
5
Sequels are desperate. We're cooler than that. We kind of thought, 'Wait a minute. If we do a sequel, we'll have enough cred from the first movie that we could do crazy-ass shit. We won't have to establish new characters and story and jump right into what we want to do.' The second part was, 'Can we make a good sequel?' There are a lot of flat comedy sequels...'Can we make a sequel that doesn't suck?'
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Fact
1
Directed 1 actor to an Oscar nomination: Christian Bale, who is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Big Short (2015).
Although his work at Saturday Night Live (1975) was mainly as a writer and director, he made several appearances on the show, usually as an over-sized, obnoxious audience member who heckles the host or cast members until the stars verbally or physically attack him. McKay had auditioned for Saturday Night Live (1975) as an actor, while he was still with the Second City Improv but didn't make the cut as on camera talent. But, he had submitted four scripts to the show which had gotten him hired as a writer.
$40 Million
