Bayonetta 3: Original Voice Actor Hellena Taylor Says She Was Offered $4,000 to Reprise Role, Calls for Boycott: ‘I Was Just Asking for a Decent Living Wage’
variety.comJ. Kim Murphy As Nintendo’s Bayonetta 3 closes in on its long-awaited release date of Oct. 28, the video game franchise’s fanbase has been rocked by a statement shared by the series’ original lead voice actor, Hellena Taylor, who shares that she did not return for the new entry after being offered only $4,000 to reprise her role. “The Bayonetta franchise made approximately $450 million.
That’s not including merchandise. As an actor, I trained for a total of seven and a half years,” Taylor shared in a statement on her Twitter. “What did they think this was worth?
What did they offer to pay me? The final offer to do the whole game — as a buyout, flat rate — was $4,000. This is an insult to me [and] the amount of time that I took to work on my talent and everything I’ve given to this game and to the fans.” Taylor first voiced the character Bayonetta, a shape-shifting witch who can summon demons, in the action series’ first 2009 entry, released by Sega and developed by PlatinumGames.
PlatinumGames partnered with publisher Nintendo for the sequel Bayonetta 2 in 2014, in which Taylor reprised her voice role.
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