The American director, screenwriter, producer, and entrepreneur George Lucas is responsible for giving birth to the ever-expanding world of Star Wars. He is the pioneer of the historical quest drama franchise Indiana Jones. He was a racing car fanatic, but a fatal accident diverted his interest to Arts. Raised on a walnut farm in California, he had a dream of becoming a millionaire.
Early Life Of George Lucas
George Lucas was born on May 14th, 1944 in Modesto, California. He initially had his eye on a career in racing cars, but after a fatal accident in high school, Lucas’ interests shifted. Lucas’s father owned a stationery store and wished for George to work for him when he graduated high school. However, George wanted to attend art school and left the house to pursue his dream career. During his time at Modesto Junior College, Lucas became enthusiastic about photography and filmmaking.
Lucas had a modest beginning as he filmed car races and other footage with an 8 mm camera. He joined the University of Southern California where he befriended fellow prolific filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Both won praises during his postgraduate studies, including a Warner Brothers student scholarship. His 1967 student film project, Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, was eventually made into his 1971 premier full-length feature film, THX 1138.
American Graffiti was born out of the bombed project. The project garnered five Academy Award nominations. Collection wise, it collected $115 million in domestic revenue, and its worldwide collection was $140 million. American Graffiti was made for $777,000 making it one of the most profitable films in history.
How Star Wars & Indiana Jones Contributed To His Repertoire As A Billionaire?
Lucas had his big breakthrough with Star Wars, filmed on an $11 million budget, and became a cult classic when it was released in 1977. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lucas directed a Star Wars trilogy, prequels to the previous films.
The most recent sequel trilogy and spin-off films and series came after Lucas sold the rights to the Star Wars franchise to Disney for $4 billion in cash and stock, although those 37 million shares over the years have grown to a value of $7.4 billion.
Another successful franchise Lucas created is Indiana Jones, reuniting again with Harrison Ford as the lead and Spielberg as director, making nearly $2 billion at the box office. Lucas also founded THX, Skywalker Sound, Industrial Light and Magic, and LucasArts as subdivisions of his parent company, Lucasfilm Ltd.
The Billionaire’s Net Worth & Real Estate Investments
George’s largest real estate asset is the nearly 6,000-acre Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California. He purchased the ranch in 1978 and has spent over $100 million turning the property into a private home, movie studio, retreat, and screening theater for 300 people.
The property also features a 50,000 square-foot private home, several pools, tennis courts, and more. Lucas has placed roughly 5,000 of the property’s acres into a perpetual conservation easement with the Marin County Agricultural Land Trust.
In 2010 he spent $19.5 million on a beachfront home in Carpinteria, California (just south of Santa Barbara). He tore down the existing home and built a much larger Cape Cod-style house on the property. In December 2019, George spent $28 million to buy the house next door.
The house next door had previously been owned by a woman named Frances Morehart who died in 2018 at the age of 93. His new combined beachfront footprint in Carpinteria is over 3-acres.In 2017, he purchased a 9,000-square-foot home in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles for $33.9 million.
George Lucas’s net worth is estimated at $10 billion in 2022.
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