Yelena Belova actor Florence Pugh earned an eye-watering amount of money for her starring roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies Black Widow (2021) and the upcoming Thunderbolts* (2025).
Pugh’s MCU payday was buried in a recent feature from The Hollywood Reporter about the next generation of A-list actors. According to the feature, Pugh “earned an eight-figure payday for two Marvel films.” It is also mentioned that Pugh is “at the top of the call sheet” for Thunderbolts*, which reunites the actor with her Black Widow co-stars David Harbour (Red Guardian), Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster), and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Valentina Allegra de Fontaine).
Not mentioned is how much the actor earned to pop up in the Disney+ series, Hawkeye. Pugh reprised the role of Yelena Belova for a three-episode arc that saw the former Black Widow targeting Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) after being led to believe that the expert marksman was responsible for Natasha Romanoff’s death.
Who is Yelena Belova in the MCU?
For the first three phases of the MCU, Scarlett Johansson‘s Natasha Romanoff — a former KGB assassin, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and member of the Avengers — was the only character to adopt the Black Widow mantle. Despite the character’s death in Avengers: Endgame, Johansson returned to the role for the Phase 4 movie, Black Widow, which introduced Natasha’s younger sister, Yelena Belova.
While not much is known about Thunderbolts*, a THR source who read a previous draft of the MCU movie reports that the story “centers on villains and antiheroes going on a mission that was supposed to end with their deaths.” Yelena, Red Guardian, and Taskmaster will be part of the titular team, as will Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost, and Wyatt Russell’s U.S. Agent.
Black Widow and Hawkeye are available to stream on Disney+, while Thunderbolts* is set to hit theaters on May 5, 2025.
