[[{“value”:”An old story but new to me. Lucas and Spielberg swapped 2.5% net points on Star Wars and Close Encounters. Pretty smart bet for both of them. Spielberg tells the story: George came back from Star Wars a nervous wreck. He didn’t feel Star Wars came up to the vision he initially had. He felt
The post Hedging Star Wars and Close Encounters appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]]
An old story but new to me. Lucas and Spielberg swapped 2.5% net points on Star Wars and Close Encounters. Pretty smart bet for both of them.
Spielberg tells the story:
George came back from Star Wars a nervous wreck. He didn’t feel Star Wars came up to the vision he initially had. He felt he had just made this little kids’ movie. He came to Mobile, Alabama where I was shooting Close Encounters on this humongous set and hung out with me for a couple of days.
He said, ‘Oh my God, your movie is going to be so much more successful than Star Wars. This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time.’ He said, ‘You want to trade some points? I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you two and a half per cent of Star Wars if you give me two and a half per cent of Close Encounters.’
I said, Sure, I’ll gamble with that, great. And I think I came out on top of that bet. I did a lot better than George!
Both movies were wildly profitable. Close Encounters made so much money and rescued Columbia from bankruptcy. It was the most money I ever made on a movie before, but Close Encounters was a meagre success story. Star Wars was a phenomenon and I was the happy beneficiary of a couple of net points from that movie which I am still seeing money on today!
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Economics, The Arts
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