Macaulay Culkin says his favorite film in the franchise is Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, offering a blunt reason on a new episode of Hot Ones: “I got paid more,” adding that his deal included a slice of net profits and a merchandising share that made every Talkboy purchase feel like a dividend. The episode posted August 7 and quickly ricocheted across entertainment outlets, with the actor leaning into the long-running curiosity about his compensation and sequel loyalties.
The comments arrive with fresh interest in the economics behind the early-1990s holiday juggernauts. Contemporary reporting and retrospectives have long noted the steep jump in Culkin’s sequel payday compared with the first film, with figures commonly cited at around $110,000 for 1990’s Home Alone and $4.5 million for the 1992 follow-up. While exact terms of private deals are rarely disclosed, the numbers reflect how quickly the then-child star’s market value rose after the original became a seasonal phenomenon.
Box office history helps explain the bargaining power. Home Alone finished its run with an estimated $476.7 million worldwide, a towering hit that held the No. 1 spot at the North American box office for weeks and established a durable holiday brand. The New York-set sequel delivered another sizable return, reaching about $359 million worldwide. Together, the pair anchored a franchise that continued in various forms through the 1990s and into the streaming era.
Culkin’s on-camera acknowledgment of participation points and merchandising echoes a standard practice for top talent on event titles, where back-end bonuses, profit definitions and consumer-product tie-ins can outstrip an upfront salary. He joked on the show that even the Talkboy recorder popularized by the sequel contributed to his bottom line. The remarks land in a period of renewed public curiosity about legacy franchises and cast compensation, spurred by memoirs and retrospective interviews from alumni across the series.
