Updated in February, 2024.

Few names in Hollywood are as instantly recognizable as Steven Spielberg. This short and unassuming (by his own words, painfully shy) man transformed the industry with his carefully composed, brilliantly arranged, and taut films. While his career started with thrillers like “Duel” and “Jaws,” he has tried his hand at almost every genre with success, including 2021's surprising musical remake “The West Side Story.”

As you'd imagine, Spielberg's success has led to a staggering amount of wealth and, if it weren't for his best friend George Lucas, he'd be the wealthiest director in Hollywood history. In 2024, Steven Spielberg's net worth is estimated to be about $4.8 billion. That amount of money is almost hard to imagine! So how did Spielberg get this much money to his name? And is it possible he could have even more?

Let's take a deep look at Spielberg's successful career, a few intelligent career moves that helped him make more money, charitable foundation work that he's helped support, and one bad decision that cost him $100 million. How is it possible that a person could lose that much money on a cocktail napkin? Well, you won't know for sure until you read to the very end of this engaging article.

Spielberg's Movies Make Big Money

It's no surprise that Spielberg's movies make a lot of money. Ever since “Jaws” created the summer blockbuster film and transformed the film industry (for better or worse), almost every movie Spielberg's directed has been a big hit. Unfortunately, however, he has had unsuccessful films.

His biggest failure was likely “1941,” a satirical World War II comedy with a cult following that barely made a profit. Even his much-hyped “West Side Story” remake was a bomb, making back one-third of its total budget.

In Spite of Failures, He Rises to the Occasion

However, these occasional misfires have not impacted his overall net worth by much because a majority of his films do huge box office.

For example, his tenth most successful movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” made $390.1 million by itself.
His top-grossing film, “Jurassic Park,” earned $1.03 billion at the box office.
Every other movie in his top 10 made close to $500 million to nearly over $800 million.

Legendarily Low Director's Fees

Obviously, Spielberg didn't earn all of that money himself. If he did, he'd honestly be an even richer man than he is now. But if you based his net worth just on what he made in director's fees, he would barely even scratch into the billion-dollar range.

So instead, Spielberg infamously asks for just a $10 million directing fee, which seems enormous but is incredibly small by Hollywood film standards.

And yet, Steven Spielberg's net worth is in the billions and (in spite of the “West Side Story” failure) isn't likely to go down much further in the future.

So how exactly has he made most of his fortune?

By him using a clever mix of intelligent business decisions and a brilliant foresight into what the market wanted. Beyond his directing skills, Spielberg's business acumen is probably second-to-none in Hollywood.

Spielberg's Clever Profit-Sharing Deal Helped Make His Fortune

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas
*Image Source: Pinterest*

While making his dream film, “Star Wars,” director and writer George Lucas feared his film would never get off the ground. So to help with extra funding, he made a deal with the studio in which he'd make almost no money directing the movie but would get the rights to all merchandising sales in perpetuity. At the time, the move was considered a laughable one by most Hollywood insiders.

However, this one business move made Lucas billions (more than the Star Wars film profits ever did), and his best friend, Spielberg, took note.

When his career started taking off, he too agreed to take much smaller director's fees but get rights for merchandising and other sales. Since then, a vast majority of his profits have come from these deals and on backend points on a film's gross revenue.

Jurassic Park Has Made Him Incredible Profits

These clever decisions have earned him a lot of raw cash over the years. For example, “Jurassic Park” earned him $250 million alone ($360 million today), which is about one-quarter of its total box office, on backend points and merchandise deals. The sequel “The Lost World” earned him $150 million, while the third movie (which he didn't direct) earned him $75 million.

That's around $475 million alone or about $684 million in today's money. That's nearly 19% of his total net worth, likely making up the most significant franchise profits in his career.

Clever deals like these have become common in Hollywood now, thanks to Spielberg's example. However, it took the desperation of George Lucas to set the example for this unique profit-sharing concept.

Spielberg Has Even Refused Payment

While “Schindler's List” may not have been among Spielberg's most financially successful movies, it is often considered his best film of all time and one of the best ever made. It highlighted Polish industrialist Oskar Schindler's attempt to save as many of his Jewish workforce as possible during the Nazi-driven Holocaust and was a taut and incredibly emotional film that approached the subject with unflinching honesty and power.

In spite of not falling in his top-grossing films, the film made a very respectable $322 million worldwide, which, compared to the modest $22 million budget, may make it one of his most profitable films based on budget to return. However, Spielberg didn't earn a single dime from the movie, which was his intention the whole time. As a Jewish person, he thought any money he'd earned would be “blood money.”

Instead, he donated all of his proceeds to help fund the USC Shoah Foundation, a group that honors and remembers survivors of the Holocaust.

He set up these payments in perpetuity, meaning that any money he makes on the movie will always go to this group. At the time, it was lauded as one of the most generous gestures in Hollywood history and is still one of his best moments as a person.

Intelligent Trademark Plans Also Net Him Steady Profits

Beyond these many clever moves, Spielberg has also cleverly leveraged his franchises and other trademarks into continued profits. These "passive" income sources provide a surprising stream of cash that would by themselves keep Spielberg rich.

How Jurassic Park Keeps Making Him Money

We mentioned how Spielberg's clever profit-sharing deals made him millions on Jurassic Park alone. However, he was able to leverage a unique agreement with Universal Pictures that has made him even more money over the years. In the early 1990s, Universal's Parent, MCA, was broke, and Spielberg's contract was up for renewal. Warner Brothers came at Spielberg heavily and very nearly got him to agree.

However, a desperate MCA wanted Spielberg's contract renewed because he was by far their most successful director. They also knew that Jurassic Park would be a huge hit and would help get them back on their feet.

So through their connection with Universal, they created a deal that would earn Spielberg two percent on all Universal Park gross tickets sales in perpetuity.

Given that Universal's many theme marks make around $5.9 billion per year (give or take), that two percent represents $118 million every year. So Spielberg, who basically has nothing to do with the park beyond some of his films and franchises helping to inspire park rides (that he doesn't create), makes almost $120 million from this one economic source alone. To paraphrase a character from Jurassic Park: “clever boy.”

Spielberg Has Helped Keep Dreamworks Going

Animation studio Dreamworks has long been an alternative to Disney and is a studio that Spielberg has had a hand in creating and maintaining over the years. Just how much he's made from the studio over the years isn't clear. However, one thing is clear: the studio would be in rough shape without Spielberg. Legal filings in 2009 found that he loaned them $15 million to keep them operating for several years.

That loan wasn't done out of the goodness of his heart, of course. By 2017, new revelations found that Comcast, parent company to Dreamworks, potentially owed Spielberg around $535 million due to a buyout clause placed in his contract when he loaned them $15 million to the company.

A short-sighted business person would likely have taken the buyout clause and ran. However, Spielberg decided not to activate it but create a new deal with Comcast. They received an ownership interest in his studio, Amblin Partners, which could earn them $1 billion. In return, he simply asked for merchandising rights and sequel rights from all films produced by 20th Century Studios. The potential profits for Spielberg could be in the billion: another intelligent career move.

A Bet With George Lucas Made Him Millions

George Lucas continually comes up a lot in Spielberg's life because, like him, he is a skilled director and business person who leveraged shared profits and merchandising into small fortunes. Before both were billionaires, though, they made a simple bet that would impact their finances for years to come. It's the kind of story that seems hard to believe but which has been confirmed multiple times.

It was during the late 1970s when Lucas was working on Star Wars. Spielberg's “Jaws” made him an overnight sensation, and the young director was working on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Lucas, known at the time for the moderately successful “American Graffiti,” was convinced that his budding project would fail, and he went to his more successful (at the time) friend for help.

According to Spielberg, Lucas wanted to trade backend points from Star Wars to Spielberg for Close Encounters, convinced the latter film would be by far more successful.

Spielberg figured he had nothing to lose, so he took Lucas up on the offer. And while Spielberg's film is a fine movie that made a lot of money at the box office, Star Wars has made billions as a franchise: and Spielberg still makes a small fortune from it alone.

Steven Spielberg’s Net Worth Could Have Been Even Bigger If His Desperate Divorce Plan Had Worked

Steven Spielberg's first marriage to actress Amy Irving was one of only a few examples of Spielberg failing. Their marriage lasted just four years, between 1985 to 1989, and their divorce was not amicable. At the time, Spielberg was already worth around $1 billion, and Irving was fighting to get her fair share. In the end, she agreed to around $105 million simply to end the divorce and move on with her life.

A Napkin Gambit Fails

In desperation to avoid paying that much money, Spielberg committed one of the most infamous moments in celebrity divorce history: he presented a cocktail napkin in place of an official prenuptial agreement, claiming that Irving had agreed to its terms. While Irving did not dispute the validity of the napkin itself (she admitted the two had created the plan while dining together before their wedding), the presiding judge did not accept it as a valid prenuptial agreement.

Moving On After Divorce

Since then, this napkin divorce has been something of a legend in Hollywood and has been parodied and mocked many times. In the end, Spielberg was forced to pay the $105 million (just one-tenth his net worth at the time), and later married skilled actress Kate Capshaw (with whom he'd worked on the 1984 film “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) and seemed to have found true love, as they remain together.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, Steven Spielberg's net worth is genuinely out of this world, and it is hard to imagine making that kind of money in a single life. Yet, through his undeniable skill as a filmmaker (including technical genius in framing shots, staging action sequences, etc.), skillfully coaching great performances out of his talent, and his lauded business abilities, Spielberg is likely to remain one of the wealthiest directors of all time. Were it not for Star Wars, his wealth and success would easily eclipse Lucas'.