George Lucas's SMARTEST Decision In Hollywood History! | Behind the Magic of Star Wars pt17 #Shorts

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When George took the star wars project to Fox, he pulled off what was perhaps one of the smartest business decisions in Hollywood history. In exchange for a lower salary of $150,000 dollars, which for us mere mortals is still pretty big especially for the standard of the 1970s, George retained the merchandising and sequel rights of the IP.

At the time for Fox executives, accepting this offer must have really been a no brainer. Prior to Star Wars, movie merch had never been a major source of revenue, and on top of that they didn’t have a lot of faith in the commercial viability of Star Wars.

But all that was about to change. Following the unprecedented success of star wars in theatres, there was an equally unprecedented demand for action figures, lunchboxes, and other merchandise. Between 1978 and 1979, Star Wars would sell 100 million dollars worth of toys, a figure that would continue to climb to 3 billion dollars per year.

And George certainly got the last laugh, sitting on a tidy sum of 5.7 billion dollars today.

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