A significant asset for the Walt Disney Company, George Walton still ranks as the world’s richest entertainer alive. It’s not wrong to name him the richest owing to how he’s acquired so much wealth in his career.
George Lucas’s Net Worth, Biography and Earnings
George Lucas’s Biography and Early Life
George Walton Lucas Jr. was born on May 14, 1944, in Modesto, California to Dorothy Ellinore Lucas and George Walton Lucas Sr.
He hails from German, Swiss-German, English, Scottish, Distant Dutch, and French descent. He’s always enthusiastic about Disneyland park since his family visited the park’s opening in July 1955.
After he Obtained a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, he tried to join the United States Air Force as an officer but was immediately turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets.
His father wanted him to work for him in his stationery store while he turned 18 but this was to no avail as Lucas wanted something different.
He attended Modesto Junior College and studied anthropology, sociology, and literature, amongst other subjects.
George Lucas’s Career and Earnings
He was initially interested in racing cars but after a fatal accident in high school where his fellow driver broadsided him and made him need emergency treatment.
He immediately lost interest. He wanted to attend art school and left home to be a millionaire by 30.
He then began shooting with an 8 mm camera and also covered car races. He met his friend Jon Plummer who had the same interest as he did in Canyon Cinema.
They also saw classical European movies and Plummer also saw classic European films of the time, including Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, and Federico Fellini’s 8½.
He worked with a lot of people and race enthusiasts like renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler who was impressed with his talent.
In 1967, his student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, was eventually made into his 1971 premier full-length feature film, THX 1138.
His next epic space opera Star Wars in 1977 had issues in production and was a hit. It was the highest-grossing film at that time. It won six Academy Awards and several applauses.
He co-wrote other sequels like The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and The Return of the Jedi.
He and Steven Spielberg created, produced, and co-wrote the popular Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, the Temple of Doom in 1984, the Last Crusade in 1989, and The Kingdom of Crystal Skull in 2008.
He has collaborated with some referred persons by Spielberg in film production. He wrote some other films between the 1970s and 2010s.
His American Graffiti grossed about $115 million within America and $140 million globally. It’s the most profitable film in history grossing $770, 000.
In 2013, President Barrack Obama awarded him the National Medal of Arts for his contributions to American Cinema. In 2015, Lucas got inducted into Disney Legend.
He afterwards sold his Lucasfilm company to Disney for a huge amount of $4.1 billion both in cash and stock.
This has doubled his net worth from $3.3 billion to $7.3 billion making him have a net worth of $10 billion. His Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises have generated north of $12 billion in global box office ticket sales.
He’s a great philanthropist and unarguably the richest in the entertainment industry till this time.