How Much Did Florence Pugh Get Paid for We Live in Time?

Two Claims, $1 Million Apart

There are exactly two published numbers attached to Florence Pugh's We Live in Time salary, and they disagree by a factor of two. Pubity, in its career rundown of the actress, states that Pugh earned $2 million for playing Almut in the John Crowley-directed romance. FandomWire, citing Spoiler US, reports that she earned $1 million for the same role.

Neither outlet names a source with firsthand knowledge. Neither has been corroborated by the film's producers — Film4 and SunnyMarch — or by A24, the US distributor. And the two claims have existed side by side for over a year without either being retracted or reconciled.

This is the classic shape of a disputed indie salary: the numbers are small enough that no trade bothers to verify them, the film's economics are modest enough that both figures are plausible, and the aggregator tier publishes with confidence what the primary sources never said. The honest position is to hold both claims at arm's length and examine which one the surrounding evidence favors.

The Indie Economics: $20 Million In, $58.7 Million Out

The film's budget is the single most useful fact in this dispute. We Live in Time was made for a reported $20 million — a genuine indie budget, financed by Film4 and SunnyMarch, not a studio tentpole. It grossed $58.7 million worldwide, per Wikipedia: a strong result for a quiet romantic drama, nearly triple its budget, and enough to make it one of A24's more successful releases.

On a $20 million budget, the salary math is tight. A $2 million lead salary would consume 10 percent of the entire production budget — possible, but aggressive for an indie romance where every dollar shows up on screen. A $1 million salary is 5 percent: still a significant commitment, but much more typical for this tier of film.

The budget does not settle the dispute — stars sometimes take outsized fees on small films when the project needs their name for financing — but it tilts the plausibility toward the lower number. A $2 million fee on a $20 million indie romance would be the exception, not the rule.

The Garfield Angle

The film's other lead provides useful calibration. Andrew Garfield played Tobias, Pugh's partner across the film's decade-spanning narrative, in a genuine two-hander: the story belongs to both of them equally, and the marketing sold the pair as a unit. In two-handers, the leads' salaries are usually in the same band — not identical, but not separated by a chasm.

Garfield's own We Live in Time salary has been separately reported (see our companion piece on his payday for the film), and the two actors were at similar career stages: both Oscar-nominated, both coming off franchise work, both selective about indie projects. If Garfield's number sits in the low seven figures, Pugh's $1 million claim fits the pattern of matched two-hander pay; the $2 million claim would make her the clearly senior earner on a film built as an equal partnership.

None of this is proof. But salary reporting is often an exercise in triangulation, and the Garfield data point is the closest thing this dispute has to an independent check.

Pugh's Documented Pay History

Pugh's prior paychecks are a study in how unreliable salary reporting can be — which is itself relevant. For Don't Worry Darling (2022), Showbiz Galore claimed she earned $700,000 against Harry Styles' $2.5 million. Director Olivia Wilde publicly debunked the claim in a Variety interview, calling it invented clickbait with "absolutely no validity." The episode is a reminder that the aggregator tier sometimes publishes fiction — and that this article's two claims come from that same tier.

For Dune: Part Two (2024), Showbiz Galore reported $300,000 for Pugh's Princess Irulan — a supporting role in a $190 million epic, where even the co-leads took franchise-scale discounts. For Marvel's Thunderbolts (2025), where she headlined as Yelena Belova, outlets reported $2 million.

The arc: $300K for a supporting franchise role, $2M to headline a Marvel film. A $20 million indie romance sits between those poles in prestige but below both in budget. The $1 million claim lands neatly in the middle of her demonstrated range; the $2 million claim would put an indie two-hander on par with a Marvel headlining fee. Again, the lower number fits the pattern better.

The A24 Romance Playbook

We Live in Time fits a specific A24 strategy: the prestige romance as a slow-burn theatrical asset. The template was Past Lives (2023), Celine Song's debut, which turned a $12 million budget into $44 million worldwide and an Oscar nomination — proving that a quiet love story with the right cast could outperform its economics several times over. We Live in Time followed the playbook: open small (five theaters, $232,000 opening weekend), expand on word of mouth (nearly 4,000 locations at its widest), and let the chemistry do the marketing.

It worked. The film became A24's second-widest release ever at the time, crossed $58.7 million worldwide, and landed in the top 25 highest-grossing A24 films — ahead of Past Lives itself. Then came the second life: a Max streaming debut in February 2025, HBO linear airings, and a UK Netflix pickup, each window finding a new audience for the film's decade-spanning structure.

The playbook explains the salary dispute's stubbornness. In the A24 romance model, the lead salaries are deliberately unremarkable — the money goes on screen, the stars take the credibility, and nobody talks numbers because the numbers were never the point. A $1 million Pugh salary fits that model perfectly; a $2 million salary would make her the exception to it. The film's commercial success, paradoxically, is why the question lingers: had it flopped, nobody would bother asking what anyone was paid. Success invites the audit.

Why Indie Romances Pay Differently

There is a structural reason the We Live in Time numbers look nothing like Pugh's franchise pay: indie romances are not salary vehicles, they are credibility vehicles. Actors of Pugh's stature take these films for the role, the director, and the awards-season positioning — and they accept indie-scale compensation because the film's budget cannot contain franchise-scale fees. The payoff comes later, in the quote increase the prestige performance justifies.

The film's performance validated the strategy. We Live in Time's $58.7 million gross on a $20 million budget made it a genuine indie success story, praised for the leads' chemistry — 79% critics, 83% audience on Rotten Tomatoes — and it kept both actors' prestige trajectories intact between franchise commitments. For Pugh, coming off Dune: Part Two and heading into Thunderbolts and Avengers: Doomsday, the film was a palate cleanser with a paycheck attached, not a payday in itself.

That is also why the dispute may never be resolved. On a film where the salary was never the story, nobody has an incentive to correct the record — not the producers, not the distributor, and not Pugh's team. The $1 million and $2 million claims will likely coexist indefinitely, each repeated by outlets that prefer certainty to accuracy.

The Bottom Line

How much did Florence Pugh get paid for We Live in Time? Two unconfirmed claims exist: $2 million (Pubity) and $1 million (FandomWire via Spoiler US). Neither is sourced to anyone with firsthand knowledge, and neither has been confirmed by the producers or the distributor.

The surrounding evidence — a $20 million budget, the two-hander structure with Garfield, and Pugh's own pay history ($300K for Dune: Part Two, $2M to headline Thunderbolts) — tilts toward the lower figure being more plausible. But plausibility is not proof, and this article will not upgrade an inference into a report. The honest answer is that her We Live in Time salary is disputed between $1 million and $2 million, and until someone with the contract speaks, that is the complete verified story.

A final note on method: this is one of those salary questions where the responsible answer is a range, not a number, and readers should be suspicious of any outlet that presents either figure with certainty. The $1 million claim and the $2 million claim both come from the aggregator tier; neither has been tested against a primary source; and the film's own economics suggest the truth sits somewhere in the low seven figures either way. What is verified — the $20 million budget, the $58.7 million gross, the two-hander structure, the debunked Don't Worry Darling claim — all points the same direction. Treat the confident single-number headlines accordingly.

And if a confirmed figure ever does surface — from the producers, the distributor, or Pugh herself — it will be worth revisiting this page. Until then, the disputed $1M–$2M range is the most honest thing that can be said about one of the quieter paydays in recent indie cinema.

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