Matt Groening's Net Worth is Cartoon Crazy
The bulk of Matt Groening’s net worth of $600 million comes from his creation and ownership of The Simpsons and other animated programs that include Futurama. He makes plenty of money from the licensing rights for the associated merchandising, video games, and movies that go with it.
E3
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I briefly met Matt Groening after his fame was in full force following the success of The Simpsons. I knew of his work from before since I loved his quirky comic strip called Life in Hell.
I went to the first E3 convention, which was on May 11, 1995. It was a convention for video games. The three E’s stand for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). During this time, the Internet was just starting to commercialize. Gaming was becoming extremely popular. Eventually, the gaming industry would rise to a level of annual revenue that exceeded the global revenues from the movie industry.
Thumbs Up
Even though the E3 convention was in Los Angles, I was the only television producer with a live crew to cover it. I interviewed attendees for my show called Thumbs Up that broadcast live from San Francisco/Silicon Valley. Thumbs Up was in syndication across the country. The premise of Thumbs Up was that we only reviewed things on the show that we truly liked.
All the manufacturers competed to have their products presented on our show. We introduced the things we thought were cool. If we disliked a product, we decided not to put it on the show, so the reviews were always thumbs-up positive.
Steve Jobs and PIXAR
For example, we reviewed the first product released by PIXAR, which was a set of screensavers on a CD-Rom disk that sold for … $29 retail! Steve Jobs was the CEO of PIXAR. Yes, the same guy who founded Apple and rebuilt it after it nearly bankrupted when they kicked him out.
I met Steve during this “kicked out of Apple” period. He was excited about his NEXT computer company and its new RSIC processing microchip. At that time, he sold NEXT back to Apple and got more excited about PIXAR and making 3D animation movies. Steve was also at the E3 convention hanging out with his techie homies.
The Simpsons
I saw a swarm of fans following a robust-looking guy around like bees seeking honey. The guy everyone wanted to talk to at that time was not Steve Jobs as much as Matt Groening. Matt Groening is the creator of The Simpsons, which was a huge hit. I stopped Matt and asked him to interview for the Thumbs Up show because naturally, we LOVED The Simpsons.
Playing video games with George of the jungle
While I was waiting for Matt to get free from his groupies to do our interview, I hung out with the actor Brendan Fraser in one of the VIP booths set up for special guests. Brendan is a wonderful guy and funny. He did not have much to say for our Thumb Up show but he did let us film him playing video games with intensity while making hilarious faces at the screen.
More foxy than the network
Matt Groening’s interview was short but poignant. He preferred, like Brendan, to be playing video games instead.
As all stupid interviewers do, I asked Matt “What is the secret to your success and what advice you have for a young and aspiring animator?” He gave me an annoyed look and then he said, “Make the network so much money that they cannot ever again tell you what to do!”
The Tracy Ullman Show
For those who do not know, The Simpsons did not birth as a full-length television program. Instead, it started as short pieces that tagged onto the end of the already popular Tracy Ullman Show. The pieces had nothing to do with the rest of the Ullman show. They were just hilariously weird.
You can see the first short called Good Night that appeared on the show with very rudimentary Simpson characters.
What Is Not To Love About Matt Groening?
Groening is chunky in a Chunky Monkey (my favorite Ben & Jerry’s ice cream) kind of way that makes him look huggable. He is also like a grizzly bear that if you are stupid enough to hug will bite your head off. He is lazy and overworked at the same time. He did an autobiography called My Wasted Life.
Life in Hell
Some of the less famous things he created are also my favorites. For example, two characters in the Life in Hell series spun off as a cartoon strip about Akbar and Jeff. They are two gay lovers who are Turkish and wear fez-style hats. They wear t-shirts that match, which look like something worn by the cartoon character Charlie Brown.
Akbar and Jeff are gay guys in a committed relationship that “came out” in the 1970s. This was way before being gay was cool and same-sex marriage was not yet legal. The comedy about what they do is hilarious. It is about average things, which is why it is so appealing. Groening says he created the characters to appease his girlfriend.
The Cartoon Nostradamus
There have been many things that appeared in Groening’s work, which were prophetic. When reviewing hundreds of shows it is startling how accurate the predictions were. The Simpsons predicted the future including Trump becoming president and the pandemic. The Simpsons also predicted a nuclear explosion that has not yet come true. I hope Matt was wrong about that one.
How Does Matt Groening Spend His Money?
Matt Groening’s net worth is spent one dollar at a time like everyone else. Seriously, I have no idea. I think he may be the type of guy who buys up old used typewriters because he thinks someday after the apocalypse they will be the only form of written communication devices that still work.
Maybe he has a tribe in Burundi that he supports. He spends his vast fortune on jungle adventures looking for the lost Ark of the covenant wearing a fedora.
Here is a list of things I can imagine that Groening owns:
An original Atari computer that he now uses as a doorstop.
A diamond-encrusted Bart Simpson statuette that fits in your palm with its tongue stuck out covered with red rubies.
Naked photos of Tracy Ullman that he used to treasure and now uses to scare away mice from his house. The gossip is that they had a tryst and it was Matt that she really wanted not his silly animations. Watch this insider video from the Tracy Ullman Show to see if you think this might be true. Ullman is in her dressing room, wearing only a robe when bear-huggable young Matt Groening comes in. Seems like there are some sparks there between them.
A flea circus that uses tiny nanotech robots, made to look like fleas, to perform the tricks.
Five chocolate Oscars. These are chocolate statues wrapped in gold foil to look like real Academy Awards. He had seven but two melted when he put them on a shelf near a sunny window.
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Matt Groening’s Net Worth From Real Estate
In 2019, Variety reports that he bought a $12 million, 6,000 square foot, four-bedroom, five-bath house in Santa Monica. The house is next door to the $12 million house he already owns, which he bought in 2011. This purchase of the house next door doubled the size of his property in the exclusive Santa Monica, California neighborhood. He also has a beach house in Malibu that he bought in 2000 for $8.5 million.
Early Life Of Matt Groening
I almost forgot! In all these net worth articles, we must talk about the early life of these now ultra-rich celebrities. The formula is always the same, a rags-to-riches story. Matt Groening’s early life was the same. Nothing remarkable at all.
He was born from a fertilized egg in Portland, Oregon. He almost fell from a chair as a child. He nearly struggled with a learning disability that made him squawk like a bird every time he read any words aloud that started with the letter “S.”
He found his calling when he discovered two discarded crayons in the trash. One was white and the other was pink. It made him want to draw a rosy picture but it is impossible to draw anything with just white and pink that looks nice. So, he melted the crayons, turned them into a candle, and then used the light of the candle to read comic books until late in the night. He used scissors to cut the character out of the comic books and cut their heads off. Then, he amused himself but swapping their heads around to different bodies.
The Origin of The Simpsons
The idea for The Simpsons came to him when he thought of the line that Dorothy says in the Wizard of OZ, “There is no place like home.” At that moment, he realized that every home needs a Homer to be the father and every stupid father’s kid is a brat, rearranged to spell “Bart.” Marge Simpson’s blue hair came from Groening’s lust for cotton candy. These ideas were not yet fully formed but some of the pieces got stuck in his brain like candy in his teeth.
He buried all these thoughts in his subconscious mind to retrieve them later when needed. He was only six years old, so he had to wait until he got older and watch the other crappy cartoons on the television in the meantime. The rest is history still in the making.
When he originally arrived in Los Angeles, he camped out under the freeway overpasses in his van while he was drawing the cartoon strip “Life in Hell.” The title of this cartoon says everything. At the time, he was not famous. He self-published the first Life in Hell comic book because he could not get any publishers interested. Life in Hell became popular, followed by Love is Hell and Work is Hell. From those comic books, he got the gig for the Tracy Ullman Show. Then, came The Simpsons and all the rest.
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Conclusion
I am grateful that Matt Groening exists because I like The Simpsons and life is truly hell; however, we learn to laugh at it. There are things about The Simpsons that always make me smile like Marge’s tall blue hair and that Homer’s favorite flavor for donuts is “purple.” The fact that Bart Simpson’s voice is a middle-aged woman is amazing. If Bart can get through the things that happen to him, I felt more confident with my life being challenging.
One reason that Matt Groening’s net worth increased from nothing to hundreds of millions is there may be a bit of greedy Mr. Burns hidden behind the huggable Matt Groening teddy bear. Groening is not evil like the Mister Burns character but he does know how to collect the dough to make the donuts, and he is indeed a high net worth individual. When asked to sell his rights to his characters for The Tracy Ullman Show, he only agreed to do it if the producer agreed to make The Simpsons, which became the most successful animation show in television history. Cowabunga!