New report suggests George Lucas has made $10 billion from Disney acquisition
When George Lucas sold his company Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company in 2012 for $4 billion, it exponentially increased his already high net worth. However, some new financial numbers have been released that shed some light on just how much Lucas has made since then.
A new post from Disney blog InsideTheMagic.net suggests that George Lucas has actually earned approximately $10 billion from the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney. Obviously, the sale of the company to Disney has seen a reinvigoration of the Star Wars brand in the last six years. From the sequel trilogy to the massively popular Galaxy’s Edge theme parks, Disney has made a ton of money off of Star Wars, and Lucas has seen his fair share of the profits.
The details of the sale helped ensure that George Lucas would make money off of the transaction no matter what, as a report from Celebrity Net Worth notes:
"George [Lucas] opted for a half-cash, half-stock deal. Technically, the deal was 55 percent cash, 45 percent stock."
The report states that this amounted to Lucas being paid approximately $2.21 billion in a cash transaction and 37,076,679 shares of the Walt Disney Company. With Disney stock trading at $50 per share at the time, this amounted to a monetary stock value of $1.85 billion.
Clearly, Lucas came out of the Disney sale an even wealthier man than he was before. However, in the years since the transaction, Disney’s stock value has risen to $200 per share, ballooning the monetary value of Lucas’ owned stocks to $7.4 billion. Additionally, the report states that Disney has given Lucas quite the payout since the sale:
"In years when Disney is paying dividends (which historically has been every year except 2020), as the owner of 37 million shares, George [Lucas] receives $32 million twice a year as a dividend payment. So in the years 2013-2019, George presumably received around $448 million in dividends."
Adding all of this together means that Lucas has earned at least $10 billion from his sale of Lucasfilm. Obviously, any brand that is acquired by Disney is going to go up in value, at least a little bit. The Mouse House has become a massive entertainment conglomerate, generating tens of billions in revenues for its various brands.
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While George Lucas has voiced some regrets in the past about selling his company, I’m sure the fact that he has made $10 billion or more from the sale has helped heal some of the wounds. With more Star Wars projects and films slated to come out in the next few years, it is likely that Lucas’ net worth will only keep rising.