Cinema
Forbes list reveals the 3 richest filmmakers in the world in 2024
Only movies like ‘Star Wars’, ‘Jurassic Park’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’ qualify for a spot on the most coveted list of the year.
As every year, Forbes magazine publishes the list of the richest people in the world and the eyes of many moviegoers have scanned it from top to bottom looking for the directors who have managed to climb the highest. The third falls already to the 2,046th place, so it was decided to make a podium that is very, very difficult to climb. They have to have a worldwide success story behind them or dozens of blockbusters that consolidate them in the twilight of their careers. Watch out for the top 3:
3 - Peter Jackson
To start from least to most, the third in disagreement is Peter Jackson, the director of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ trilogies. At 62, Peter Jackson is ranked 2,046 on the Forbes list with $1.5 billion in the bank. Since his success with the Tolkien adaptation, he hasn’t been much more lavish with his theatrical output (although he has made other blockbusters, such as this version of ‘King Kong’ with Naomi Watts), but who cares when your movies have grossed more than 6 billion at the box office.
2 - Steven Spielberg
The second name is a four-time Oscar winner and a filmmaker whose films have grossed more than 10 billion at the box office. We are talking about Steven Spielberg, who at the age of 77 has managed to climb to number 648 on the Forbes list with $4.8 billion. Some so many successful movies and sagas bear his name that the money is not coming from a single front. And what better example than the 10 most watched movies of his career:
- ‘Jurassic Park’
- ‘E.T., the extraterrestrial’
- ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’
- ‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park’
- ‘War of the Worlds’
- ‘Ready Player One’
- ‘Saving Private Ryan’
- ‘Jaws’
- ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’
- ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’
In addition to his work as a director, he is also a producer, having worked on hits such as the Transformers saga, Back to the Future, Casper, The Flintstones and The Mask of Zorro.
1 - George Lucas
It couldn’t be anyone else. The filmmaker who appears the highest is George Lucas who, at 79 years old, is in 548th place on the Forbes list with $5.5 billion accumulated. It is curious because, unlike the previous ones, almost all his fortune comes from a single saga: Star Wars. The director has already retired from the seventh art and sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for 4.1 billion in stock and cash. In other words, each new film trilogy, each new streaming series and each event or video game about the Jedi continues to add a handful of extra dollars to the coffers of his ranch.