What to Know
Alex Honnold’s recent free solo climb of a 1,667-foot skyscraper in Taiwan was broadcast by Netflix, but the streaming platform reportedly paid him an “embarrassingly small amount” of money for it. Prior to the dangerous climb, the 40-year-old climber and father of two spoke to The New York Times about what motivated him to take this risk. He told the publication that if he had the opportunity, he’d actually climb the skyscraper for free.
Compared to what athletes usually make, the amount of money Alex made was ’embarrassing.’
The building Alex climbed is called Taipei 101. The 101-floor building is one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Alex climbed it without ropes. You might assume that Netflix paid Alex a decent sum of money to do this stunt, but as he explained to The New York Times, that was not the case — at least not when you compare it to the amount professional athletes normally make.
He declined to tell the publication exactly how much he was making. But he did say, “If you put it in the context of mainstream sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount. You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts.”
Because Alex declined to give a dollar amount, the reporter tried to guess and asked if he was getting paid $10 million for the risky climb. “No!” Alex responded. “So in that case, yeah, an embarrassingly small amount.” According to the publication, other sources said Alex’s pay was “in the mid-six figures.”
This didn’t seem to matter to him.
Based on the interview, it seems like Alex didn’t really mind that he wasn’t making a ton of money off of it. The money was more of an added bonus. “I mean, I would do it for free. If there was no TV program and the building gave me permission to go do the thing, I would do the thing because I know I can, and it’d be amazing,” he explained.
He added, “If there wasn’t the whole spectacle around it, and I just had the opportunity to go do it by myself, I’d be fine with that.” Climbing a building like this one is actually something Alex had been thinking about for years.
Alex told the publication, “As a kid, I climbed buildings quite a lot. I haven’t as an adult because it’s illegal. Basically it’s just really hard to get permission to climb a building, and anytime you get permission, you kind of have to say yes.”
Ahead of the live broadcast, Alex knew some people were critical of his decision to climb the skyscraper. However, he said he hoped the climb would bring viewers a sense of “childlike joy.”
“My hope is that people watching it will at least see the joy in it,” he told the publication. “Like when you’re a kid and look around and think, It’d be amazing to climb up there. As an adult, that gets hammered out of you. ‘Why would you do that? That’s dangerous. Do you have insurance?’ You know, all that type of stuff.”
Alex’s kids don’t know about his free soloing.
Alex is well known for the film Free Solo, which came out in 2018 and shows him free soloing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. At this point, his two children don’t yet know about their dad’s adventures. Alex and his wife, Sanni McCandless, welcomed their daughter June in 2022 and welcomed their daughter Alice in 2024. With them being so young, they still don’t have an understanding of what their dad is doing.
He explained to CNN, “I don’t think they even know what dad does. I don’t think they know what climbing is when we’re bouldering, kind of climbing small rocks. They’ll play in the forest and they’ll play around, but I don’t think climbing means anything to them yet.”
