You would think their first big break, writing "Good Will Hunting" and selling the script for more than half a million dollars would have made them rich...but not the case.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon thought they were set for life after they sold their 1997 movie Good Will Hunting for $600,000. On a recent episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, Affleck detailed just how wrong they were.
"When we sold Good Will Hunting I was like, 'We are now rich for life. My needs are over. I will never have to work again,'" the Air actor said. Instead, it turns out, they were “broke in six months.”
"We sold it for $600,000, we split that, $300,000 each, and then the agents got $30,000. So we had $270,000, and we paid about $160,000 in taxes, so we had $110,000,” Affleck explained. “Each bought $55,000 Jeep Cherokees, and then had $55,000 left, which naturally we decided to rent a $5,000-a-month party house on Glencoe Way by the Hollywood Bowl, and we were broke in six months."
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