Kevin Hart Has Beat the Giant to Become the World’s Highest Paid Comedian
Forbes has released its list of the highest paid comedians in the world for 2016, and there’s two huge stories this year on a list that tends to be a bit repetitive. Kevin Hart, the giant slayer has finally hit number one, becoming the first person in ten years to oust Jerry Seinfeld from the top spot, beating Seinfeld by a wide margin with over $87 million in reported earnings, but don’t worry, Jerry still sits comfortable in the two spot and Terry Fator stayed at third thanks to a big Vegas deal. Hart, by the way nearly tripled his earnings from last year’s Forbes list.
Amy Schumer has become the first female comedian to crack the top ten list high up at the #4 spot with $17 million in earnings from touring, a hit movie, a Super Bowl commercial, and a sweet $8 million book deal, putting her ahead of long time Forbes lister, ventroloquistic comedian Jeff Dunham who takes the five slot. Dave Chappelle is sixth on the list (jumping up a few spots this year) with a huge tour bringing in enough to put his earnings at $13 million. He’s as much in demand as ever. Jim Gaffigan joined the list earning $12.5 million this year thanks to big tours, and some major ad deals with KFC and Chrysler explaining why he decided to stop working so damn hard on this excellent, but smaller market TV series on TV Land. That landed him at #7. AND he opened for the Pope!
Spot number eight goes to Fluffy, Gabriel Iglesias who is another touring machine, Russell Peters comes in at number 9 dropping a few spots from last year. He’s got a special out on Netflix on October 7. UK stand up comedian John Bishop closes out the list at number 10.
Not on this year’s list, is Louis C.K. who actually took a huge hit thanks to the expenses of his internet series Horace and Pete. We expect to see him back on top in 2017 once that little red number is out of the equation.
