Sometimes a smart decision can change your entire life. At least that’s what George Lucas proves, who was recently named the richest celebrity in the world by Forbes magazine – with a fortune of around $5.5 billion.
Of course, the filmmaker has this to thank for this Star Wars franchise, which has continued to grow steadily over the last 47 years and has made Lucas’ tons of money. However, if he hadn’t made one seemingly small and insignificant decision when developing Star Wars, things might look different today.
George Lucas secured all merchandising and sequel rights to Star Wars
After George Lucas made a name for himself in the film industry with his feature film debut THX 1138 in the early 1970s, the director landed his first big cinema hit with American Graffiti in 1973. The film was able to gross around $140 million against a budget of just $775,000, while receiving five Oscar nominations.
Although numerous producers rejected the expensive science fiction idea of Star Wars, Lucas found an ally in Alan Ladd Jr., who helped him get the film into position at 20th Century Fox. Ladd Jr. secured Lucas a deal with the studio Budget of $11 million
– an incredible sum for the time.
Star Wars: Lightsabers had power cords?
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At the same time, Lucas was offered a directing fee of $500,000 for the sci-fi hit, which was about three times the fee he received for American Graffiti. But Lucas suggested a different deal to the studio. In return for keeping his previous salary of $150,000, he demanded the full amount Rights to all merchandising products of the film, as well as the Rights to all possible sequels from Star Wars.
According to Deadline, this deal was a hit for the studio, as Fox had only written blood-red numbers in 1967 with a merchandising campaign centered around Doctor Dolittle. At the same time, the studio did not yet believe in the film’s franchise potential and considered Lucas’ demands for sequel rights irrelevant.
Star Wars merchandise became more lucrative for George Lucas than the films themselves
However, George Lucas turned out to be right. Not only did Star Wars become one of the most successful films of all time in 1977 and has grossed around $775 million to date. Between 1977 and 1978, around $100 million was earned from the sale of toys. Now the income from Star Wars merchandise alone is said to be over $18 billion amount.
The following five Star Wars films brought an additional $3.5 billion into the box office. There were also billions in revenue from sales of DVDs and video cassettes, video games, books and other franchise products. That brought George Lucas’s personal fortune to about $3.2 billion by 2012, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Then he made another extremely financially savvy decision: he sold the entire franchise along with his production company Lucasfilm sold to Disney for around $4 billion.
George Lucas was paid around $2.21 billion by Disney and received an additional $37 million Shares of the studio, which bring him annual dividends. According to Forbes, Lucas’s net worth today is around $5.5 billion. If the filmmaker hadn’t secured the merchandising and sequel rights to Star Wars back then, this fortune would probably only be a fraction of what it was.
Podcast: The best streaming films so far in 2024 on Netflix, Amazon and Co.
We’re taking a first look back at the streaming year 2024 and introducing you to the five best streaming films that have been released on Netflix, Amazon and Co. to date.
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Tough fighting action from Germany, a thoughtful science fiction adventure with Adam Sandler and new films from three great directors: There have already been some strong films to discover in the streaming sector this year.
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