Founding DreamWorks and Future Legacy

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And best of all, No spreadsheets St managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. tryry for free today at odoo. com. OdWo. com A twenty six year old man crouches on a small fishing boat in the middle of the ocean. It's nineteen seventy four He's wearing denim cutoffs, long hair and aviator shades peeering through a camera, but the swell is bobbing them up and down so it won't stay still for a moment Kill Bruce, he shouts. From beneath the water, a ginormous shark's mouth appears with hundreds of sharp teeth. But just as the shark is launching out of the water It stops crashing down awkwardly. broken again. The blood drains from our young director's face. That's another day's shoot ruined. He whispers under his breath I'm never going to work again he needn't have worried when it's released. His film will be the highest grossing film ever they want will want to go in the water again Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million onto a billion. My name is Xg Singg and I'm a journalist author and podcaster. And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor And you'll probably live under a rock if you haven't seen one of these guys films. Yeah, the early years of this are very much my era. so I feel very comfortable with this and very excited about it because we're talking about Stehven Spielberg, the most commercially successful movie director in history. That's right, he is currently worth a c sevenillars bill doars And he turns eighty this year. Congratulations, Stehven. In over a fifty year career he's made some of the world's most beloved movies. ET, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, that's just to name a few. I've got to say, my parents took me to see Jeorges when I was six years old. That strikes me as too early. too young Je. I think basically they couldn't get a babysitter so they just hoped that I've fall asleep But I watched the whole thing terrified. The bit where the head comes out of the hole in the bottom of the boat, the whole place freaked out. It was quite a moment Were you scared to go into the water after that? I think we all were. I mean, tellell me somebody who doesn't get m. They really did give sharks some bad rep. And before that, this idea of a summer blockbuster didn't really exist. I mean he kind of redefined. Now to some people. they'll say he ruin C cinema with this kind of blockbuster idea. And he's actually got a new film coming out this year called Disclosure Date. Have you heard anything about that? I have heard nothing about it. It's going to be about aliens, but this is a business podcast and we have to talk about business. And actually I was really surprised to learn Steven Spielberg, pleases so many people in the cinemas is not a people policer. he's actually one of the toughest negotiators in Hollywood. And so we're going to find out who is the man behind some of our favourite films. So let's start rooll the opening credits Stephen Allen Spielberg was born in nineteen forty six in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, the eldest child with three younger sisters. His mother Leia was a former concert pianist, a free spirit who never said no to Stephen, but his father, Arnold, was a very different kind of man. He was one of the first computer engineers. He was stoic, he was a workaholic and his job meant that the family moved around quite a lot. So by three, he was in New Jersey. by age ten, he was in the newly built suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. And Stehven Spielberg described himself as a fearful kid And the first film he ever saw was The Greatest Show on Earth He was terrified by the movie's train crash. So age twelve, he recreated it repeatedly with his own model trains then he got the idea to film it with his dad's little eight millimeter movie camera. so he could watch the film over and over again. He said I was able to, I think, intuitively R back control of my fear calm me down, that's super interesting. That's a really interesting insight into a director's psychology because I think you do have to be a bit of a control freak to be a movie director Around the same time he became a boy Scout, he made it to Eagle Scout. That's the highest rank attainable. Only about four percent of scouts ever make it there. And his first film was a movie he made at the age of twelve to fulfill the photography Merit Badge. It was a three minute western called The Last Gun fight And his fellow scouts were absolutely bananas for the movie. The applause, the laughter, it made him feel like he really wanted to do that again to please again. And at thirteen, he made a forty minute war film called Escape to Nowhere with his classmates as actors. His father had been a radio operator on a bomber plane during World War two and was responsible for Stehven's lifelong interest in war you know, we all know saving private Ryan, right And he had a lot of stories from his dad, even watched his father's friends break down in tears. So that thing about drama and emotion. And that film won first prize in a statewide competition. actuallyually you can watch that on YouTube. As a teenager, Stephven made over a dozen short films using his dad's camera. He paid for film with the money he made through small manual jobs like painting citrus trees. And by ' seventeen he'd written, directed, and edited his first feature length film called Firelight a sci fi that was kind of a dry run for what would later become close encounters of the third kind And that's the iconicone What was it? a tone that the aliens make? We sent it into space for the aliens to see whether we could actually communicate with them. Well, Stephen composed a score for Firelight himself on the clarinet, and his mum then created sheet music, which was then performed by the highigh school Marching band. And the film even had its own premiere. got it into his local cinema in Poenix, his dad hired it for the evening and he sold five hundred tickets at a dollar each profit only just about covered his costs. Now years later, Tom Hanks would later describe Stepehven's personality as the AV audiovisual guy in school. You know, the guy who brings the movie projectors round knows how to thread the film onto them, not normally the most popular kid in class. and Stehven has said himself, I was so sort of ostracised In that last year of high school, the camera became my defensive weapon and his outsider status ran deeper. His family was Jewish, although not strict in their practice And in suburban Phoenix, this made Stephven the target of some anti Semitic bullying And because of this, he had quite a complicated relationship with his Judaism. He said, I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be a Gentile non Jewish with the same intensity that I wanted to be a filmmaker And this would make Stepehven feel like an outsider for the rest of his life. However, his sister Anne has said that despite being a nerd, he had more friends than he remembers, I don't think he realized the crushes that some girls had on him. He really had an incredible personality. He could make people do things. He made everything he was going to do sound like you wished you were part of it. That suchrilliant quality to have, isn't it? Because doing a movie, you'll have to lead a huge team of multidisciplinary people But Stephen's parents divorced in nineteen sixty five. That was the year he was graduating from high school. He wasn't a high achieving student, he was rejected twice from the University of Southern California's film schoolchool, that the most prestigious film program in Hollywood. Instead, he studied film production at California's State College, Long Beach There's a story that Stephven has told many times and every time he tells it, it's slightly different. As a university student, Stephven snuck off during a Universal stududios tour by hiding in a bathroom then spent the day wandering around the lot watching productions be made. After impressing a guy called Chuck Silvers, he was given a three day pass. On the fourth day he says he dressed in a suit And the security guard waved him in and that summer he hung out every day and became an unofficial apprentice at Universal Studios, which he described as a film school inside a studio. In reality, when he was sixteen, his dad had pulled some strings and he knew someone at Universal and he arranged that first visit with Chuck Stephven and Chuck stayed in touch and Stehven came back during summers in college. Yeah. So boy, he knows how to spin a yn, doesn't it? Yeah even about himself. Meanwhile, he was getting poor grades at university. He dropped out after two years. Now I've lost count of the number of our billionaires who dropped out of college. But crucially he didn't drop out of Stanford. No, he didn't. Instead in nineteen sixty eight, he made a short film called Am Blin twenty four minute love story The Amblin is a word you might recognize. That's Stehven Spielberg's own brand. Exactly. He got financing from a friend, the aspiring producer Dennis Hoffman for twenty five thousand dollars and five percent of the profits. And that film was screened at the Atlanta Film Festival where it impressed executives at Universal, a massive film studio. Sid Seinberg, then the head of Universal's television department signed Stehven to a seven year contract as a TV director. Now bear in mind, Stephven at this point is just twenty one years old, making him the youngest director ever to be signed to a long term contract by a major Hollywood studio And you know it's worth noting that this was at a time when being a young director was not really necessarily considered a good thing. Yeah. But he's doing a job of work. over the next few years, he directed episodes of TV shows, who wass paid two hundred seventy five dollars a week includcluding interesting fact. quQiz fact this one He directed the pilot episode of Columbo. I can see that definitely being a pubc. That's a good one. Then in nineteen seventy one, he made a TV movie a thrill called Jewel And it did so well that Universal decided to give it a theatrical release, like put it in cinemas. And it was so good, I agree with that that at a party thrown by Franis Ford Coppola, a young George Lucas hid in a bedroom to watch it at the first commercial break. He ran downstairs saying, Francesis, you' got to come and see this movie. This guy is really good What I wouldn't give to be at that party, imagine. you're just wandering around trying to find the bathroom and then you come across George Lucas. Well worth a watch, though. It's a brilliant. What is it about? It's about develops a monstrous personality, say this guy is driving along in his car And he just overtakes this truck and they kind of honk at each other. and he doesn't think any moreore of it. And this truck then beoms to hunt him down. kill him basically and it's gripping. and here's an interesting fact. At the end, the truck goes off the edge of a cliff. And it makes this horrible noise. and you kind of see this kind of spirit coming out of the truck like it's been possessed by something They used exactly the same noise when Jaules, the shark is killed at the end of Jaules. And now that is another great pup quiz fact. I'm remember that one. Well, the success of Dor convinced two producers, Richard Zank and David Brown to let Stephven direct his first theatrical feature film at the age of just twenty four, The Sugarland Express starring Goldie Horn Now the film didn't do that well, but more importantly, he impressed its producers And Richard said, The first shot, it was the most elaborate thing I've ever seen in my life. I knew right then and there that this guy probably knew more at that age about the mechanics of working out a shot than anybody alive at the time praise. So, Richard and David immediately hired Stehen to direct another film, this time about a shark. This film of course was Jaws. It was incredibly difficult to make. Stephven was twenty six at this time. He described it as a living nightmare. Two of the lead actors in it, Robert Shaw and Richard Drafers had a massive feud And of course, the biggest issue was the ocean, which was nearly impossible to film on They had three mechanical sharks, they cost a quarter of a million dollars to build. and they were nicknamed Bruce. They hadn't been tested in salt water, so in the sea they broke down constantly. This caused huge delays, the production ran way behind schedule, went massively over the original four million dollars budget and cost twelve million dollars During filming, Stehven thought Jaws would be the end of his career. Universal Sid Seinberg sat him down and said, Look This is a disaster. I don't know what to do. Icept we could pull the plug right now. we could take our losses. I'm going to let you make the call. And this is a very crucial, but Stehen decided to continue. This feels like one of those sliding doors moments really determined the entire Exactly future of our billionaires. And also the movie industry in a way. Yeah. I mean, necessity often, the mother of invention Because the mechanical sharks really worked, he was forced to turn the shark into something like an unseen presence, like a bit like you know, the alien and alien Instead, he use clever camera angles, and there's a legendary editor called Werner Fields who basically was tasked with kind of keeping with you know, rather unconincing Mchan Kool shhark out of the shot. And it was that. and John Williams amazing score that made it this kind of really menacing unseen presence Jorce is not just a sort of shark film. I think Jeorge is one of the top five films of any kind ever made. Of all time. Of all time. What makes it so good and He' so taught The finish film was not the monster movie he'd intended. Instead it became a suspense driven thriller, more like a kind of hitchcock type film And it became an unimaginable success. It was released in nineteen seventy five, became the highest grossing film of all time up to that point ever. It brought in four hundred eighty million dollars at the box office. Stehven's earningsough were a little more modest, his FIFA directing would probably have only been in the tens of thousands of dollars But more importantly, Steven's agent renegotiated his deal just before the film opened and got Stehven five percent of the profits known in the business as points. Now, points are usually shares of net profit rather than gross revenue, and often they're paid only after investors get back their costs. Remember this because it will become important later So Stehven was only able to collect about three million dollars, but this is what made him a millionaire And for a twenty eight year old in nineteen seventy five, this made him Hollywood rich. Yeah, we're going to come back to that gross a net on movies massively important for this industry a little bit later But let us go from a million Billion Basically, Geors changed Hollywood. It was the first ever summer blockbuster fromrom then on Studios wanted these big budget films every summer so they could spend a ton of money marketing them, wide distribution, rather than tens of millions at the box office. They now were hoping to take hundreds of millions And importantly for Stephen, George's success established him as Hollywood's most valuable young director Universal Studios offered him jaels two, but he turned it down. A wise move in my view. Instead, he made his next movie with Columbia Pictures. And I have to confess I haven't actually watched Stehven's second film, which was Close Encounters of a third What? You haven't seen it No, and absolutely Amazing And it's funny because I love all the films and TV shows that came after it, piles, you know, things like that that were clearly inspired by alien film. Funny story because Richard Drefus kind of knew that Steven Spielberg was going to be a big deal. He kind of felt it And so during the filming of Jeweles He basically spent the entire time trying to persuade Stehven Spiilberg to cast him in the next movie, which he duly did. Drefus clearly had a good intuition about him. Again, he made a massive hit. On a twenty million budget, the film grossed over three hundred million dollars wide That is huge. He'd negotiated seventeen point five percent of the net profit, but this only worked out at around five million after the studio recouped their costs. And it actually saved Colombia who had been deep in debt and were facing bankruptcy. This is a fascinating story. George Lucas, director of Star Wars, by the way, we've covered him on Good Bad billionaire actually took some of his profits from that film George had visited Stephen while he was filming close encounters, and as I say, George was making a little film called Star Wars at the time. He was nervous it wasn't going to be a hit And on the close encounter set, comparing the movies, George felt even more concerned. I don't like the look at what this guy's doing. too good. So George asked to trade points with Stephen. George were given two and a half percent of Star Wars, if Stephven gave him two and a half percent of close encounters. And Stehven said, sureure, I'll gamble with that. Great. And even though close encounters were hit, it was nothing like the monster that was stoars which grossed seven hundred seventy five million dollars So Stephven did pretty well off that little bet. I can't imagine the conversation that Stehven, George and their lawyers and agents must have had. When these two guys call their teams up to be like, Hey, we made a little gamble. We made a bet. It's fun. Exactly. Lots of hand wringing, I think. I guess no one cared until it became a monster hit, right? So was very true. And if you listen to the episode about George Lucas, you'll know that the idea of a space opera was not exactly one that went down particularly well in Hollywood when it was first mooted We're back to Stephven, and after a brief Dud, the film nineteen forty one, he has two more ginormous creative and commercial hits. F of all Raiders of the Lost Ar Indiana Jones, of course, this is the collaboration he did with George Lucas, which grossed three hundred fifty four million dollars. And that film was made with paramounts, where Stehven's directing fee was a million dollars But crucially, the deal guaranteed him gross points. Now, another little explainer, net points means you're paid from the money left after all the costs are deducted. So studios can deduct production costs, they can deduct marketing, distribution, internal costs, etcetera, etcetera. The list goes on. Getting net points often produces very little income for a director. Yeah, it's very interesting this because often for lots of reasons, including tax Lots of films don't end up making much of a net profit. Whereas gross points means you're paid from the gross revenue, i. e. total money earned before most deductions. It's very hard to manipulate you earn money as soon as the film starts making money G points are incredibly valuable and they're not given away easily by the studios. Stephven was one of the first directors to get gross points. According to George, all the other studios got very upset with Paramount for making that deal If you want a good insight into how Hollywood stududios work, there's a very fun television show called The Studio starring Seth Rogan as a sort of hapless movie executive that is actually quite a good insight into the way that studios try and exert control and power over filmmakers to lesser in greater degrees. Well Stephven, in real life is actually an infamously hard negotiator. The editor in chief of Variety has said It's as tough to make a deal with him as anyone in history. The New Yorkers described him as an unusually tough businessman, a ferocious, canny, obsessively secret negotiator, and not a terribly generous one If you remember his own sister, Anne, she's a filmmaker too, she said, he's a very tough bargainer, he's a hard man to deal with on those things, there are times I'd be tempted to take things other places where I know I would get a better deal. So he doesn't even go easy on his own sister. And it's quite interesting that because sometimes you think, Ohh the creative, whatever, they don't care about the money side of it. he clearly does And for his next film, ET Gross points, which we just discussed became incredibly lucrative because it became the highest grossing film ever again at the time, taking nearly eight hundred million dollars beating Star Wars. And for ET, he was back with Universal, but this time he negotiated a new clause in his contract to control the release of the VHS version of the movie. Remember VHS? and split the profit? When ET went to videoide in nineteen eighty eight, the sales added an extra seventy million dollars to his earnings. Now ET, I'm sure you've seen the film, was actually influenced by his parents' divorce. and the character was actually based on an imaginary friend he created. He said, This is a friend who could be the brother I never had and a father I didn't feel I had anymore. Come on, I think you can do the ET voice. I bet you can do the ET voice., come I do it? That's I on Cast your mind back to think E. I got that That is good. Although, you've given Eie a British accent. Have I? Which I'm not sure is strictly. Okay. Well listen, I'm not that, you know, I know that I'm going to be made fun of here but you know, I'm up for it. it's fine. I don't mind being. Well, I think it's quite rare. I think it's quite sweet that he based Ei on his parents' divorce. He's clearly quite a sensitive guy too. Yeah, he's sensitive. There's a slight, I mean, if there's one criticism or Something a little saccharine, some people would say about it. And that's something that his films have also been criticised for by film critics that they reveer on sentimentality. They're very sweet, aren't they? Yeah. So at this point, Stehven was also becoming more than just a director. Maybe he was inspired by his good friend George Lucas, but he also set up his own production company named Amblin after that short film we discussed Stephven was now the boss with about fifty staff and through Amlin he added the revenue stream of executive producer for major films, including Gremlins, Back to the Future and Who framed Roger Rabbit whichich came out in nineteen eighty eight, an underrated classic in my eyes. A, yes. Jessica Rabbit was a big heartthrob to me in my youth. Exactly You don't You just don't get real people acting alongside animated cartoons that much It was Bob Hoskins wasn't who played alongside all the different characters. Yes, Bob Hoskins plays the private detective. That's right. Well, Amblin also got Stehven into TV, which included cartoons and the incredibly successful drama ER, which ran for three hundred thirty one episodes trivia question, I think. Yeah By the mid nineteen eighties, Stehven increasingly refused a traditional director's fee. Instead, he was betting on the success of his phones by negotiating gross points. He said, I'm a gambler. I love gambling to see what's going to make it and what is not According to Forbes, his typical movie deals were something like this. The studio absorbs all costs. Once the movie starts to bring in revenue, he generally gets a five percent cut if he produced a film and fifteen percent if he directed it. He makes money even if the film loses overall. His gross points often rise, say to thirty percent until the film breaks even At that point He and the studio split the profits fifty fifty 's a Hall ofidale. Deeply unconventional for Hollywood Now we're going to skip over the next few films, although we should pause briefly maybe on the second Indiana Jones movie because it got him his second wife His first wife, Amy Irving, was an actress he met in nineteen seventy six during an audition for close encounters. Their relationship has been described as tempestuous and troubled. Over the next decade, they broke up, got back together, eventually married in nineteen eighty five and had a son together But in nineteen eighty nine the couple divorced and their settlement is one of the most expensive in history estimated at one hundred million dollars. His second wife, Kate Capsa, was the actress in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. If you ever wondered what happened to her They married in nineteen ninety one after she converted to Judaism for him, and they'd go on to have five children together, two of whom are African American and adopted In an interview, she said, We were watching Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom the other night on television. I turned to Stephen and I said, What happened to my career after that movie? He said, You weren't supposed to have a career. you were supposed to be with me And it's true, my focus was on Stehven and a large family. I'm not sure I would personally react that well if that's what my husband told me about my own career, but you know clearly they're very happy together. Yeah. Well, Stehven credits Kate's conversion Judaism as bringing himself back to Judaism. and soon after he connected creatively with his faith by directing the Holocaust film nineteen ninety three's Schindlerers List. While filming Shllist Stehven said he cried all the time, it was in his words the most personal film I've ever made, because it was something I was so ashamed of. It's a three hour black and white movie about the Holocaust. It's a hard watch. Stephven was convinced it would lose money, even the budget was just twenty two million dollars, but he needn't have worried the film grossed over three hundred twenty million dollars worldwide However, he actually gave away his profits for the movie, saying I was unwilling to keep it because it was blood money. In fact, Schindler's list was the film that got him into philanthropy. After the film, he set up two foundations, onene gives grants to Holocaust and Jewish continuity projects, and the other records testimonies from Holocaust survivors However, he said he mostly gives anonymously because of his faith. He said, a rabbi sat me down and told me, you know, if you put your name on everything, it goes unrecognized by God. I said, reallyally? So eighty percent of what I give is anonymous and the other twenty percent is only where my name can help attract other mies, which is a really interesting approach to philanthoppy. Now, obviously he can be a mustering point for other donors, Cti if he discloses that he's one Well, Shinda's list won Stephven his first Oscar Awards for Best Director and Best Picture brought him a new kind of credibility. He was a hit maker but hadn't been really recognized creatively. course he wasn't done with blockbusters quite yet. The same year that Sindler's list came out, something quite different Jurassic Park. Now Jurassic Park became the highest grossing film ever at the time. I seem to be saying that quite a lot as we go through this. It's a common refrain basically he keeps breaking his own records. And it grossed over nine hundred fourteen million dollars worldwide. Stehven and Universal were essentially fifty fifty partners on this film. So he was getting money as both a director and as a producer through Amberlin Altogether, he made about two hundred fifty million dollars from the film by far the most an individual had ever made from a movie or any other unit of entertainment that we can find at that time. Well, Jurassic Park also made him money long after the popcorn had been swept off to cinema floors and people had been ushered out. Before the film, Universal had been worried about Stehven being poached by Time Warner, another studio So to keep Stephven sweet, his old mentor, Sid Shine Bt devised one of the most unusual deals in Hollywood, Stehven has a habit of racking these up become and this is so fun creative consultant for Universal Studios theme Parks. and his job was helping to design elements of the parks as well as the rides, I mean, I'm sorry, this sounds like a dream job In exchange he would get two percent of all park ticket revenue plus a portion of park concession receipts. And now this this really is a phenomenal deal Stehven takes home about thirty million dollars every single year and he signed that deal in perpetuity. Soans he gets it forever. Oh wish someone would offer me a deal where I get thirty million dollars a year for the rest of my life. Imagine every single ticket you buy to Universal Studios. a tiny bit of that goes into Steven Spielberg's pockets.osh Given all of that, it's really not surprising that in nineteen ninety four Forbes declared Steven a billionaire agge forty six. This made him the first officially listed entertainment billionaire. And what's incredible about this compared to many of our billionaires is how much cash he had. Many of our billionaires get that status based on the value of their companies, what they own in stock and what is valued on the stock market But it was estimated that Stephven had more than six hundred million dollars in sort of hard assets, cash basically The remainder was the value of his wholly owned Amblin entertainment. It's a good thing Stephven had a lot of cash floating around because he's about to get into one of the most expensive businesses in the industry, owning his own studio. The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. 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After Sindless List came out, he took a three year break from directing to found a company called DreamWorks SKG. The S stands for Spielberg, the K for X Disney chair Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the G for music mogul David Geffin. And we've already covered some of this story by the way, in our David Geffin episode The three men put in their own money thirty three point three million dollars each plus two billion of other people's money, including half a billion from Microsoft co founder Paul Allen. I remember this being founded at the time. It was like a big, huge deal. It was kind of like money and the creative industries coming together. And of course, they had that really cool bit of imagery of the boy in the moon with with the little fishing rod, which I thought summed up quite a lot of felt very sppibergie, didn't it? Exactly But starting a studio is a much bigger gamble than a production company. This is the first new, big studio in a generation The other ones were all established for World War II during that golden age of Hollywood, MGM, all those kind of people Those studios had vast back catalogs and the revenue from that keeps them afloat when they make inevitable multim million dollar flops. All studios make flops. It's one of those weird businesses. you make ten films and you hope that the blockbuster that does really well kind of helps you pay for all the duds that you make. But if you've got this kind of revenue coming in from, you know your back your back catalog, that can cushion all of that So Stehven up to this point had been relatively flop free. He had a few duds, but he never really made a film that had lost money. Stehven said I threw myself over the barbed wire with Jeffrey and David so we could have what we wanted Three founders took on different roles at Tomworks As an execut at in another studio put it, Stephven is still the idea man, and though no one ever says it, Jeffrey' iss doing all the grunt work, while Geffin sort of lurks in the wings and lobs a balll in or two when he's inspired to do so. Quite scathing of David Geffin there But with so much skin in the game, you'd assume that Stephen would make films exclusively for Dreamworks. But no, the first film he directed after setting up DreamWorks was the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World, which was for Universal. It was another box office smash, although less well received by critics. I mean at the first Jurassic Park, there were someort of jaw dropping moments when you first saw the dinosaurs kind of Wow These days it's kind of mere more dinosaurs. Yeah, I know. What else are they going to throw at us aliens? Yeah Well, two years after initially forming, Dreamwork still had no live action films in production, which was a serious concern for the people who backed them So Dreamworks pushed a film called The Peacemaker to be released in nineteen ninety seven. It wasn't directed by Stehven, wasn't well received by critics. Stehven, I think, in a way, remedial action, immediately shot two films for Dreamworks, meaning he shot three films in just twelve months, including Jassic Park, remember. So they released Stephven's historical drum Amistad The critics didn't mind, it did okay with them, but it lost money And Stephen explained, I kind of dried it out. It became too much of a history lesson. Not enough of his sugary sentimentality, maybe. His Hollywood glass. Yeah By the next year nineteen ninety eight, they really got into the swing of things. His Dreamworks film Saving Private Ryan was a commercial and critical hit. He said he made it for his dad whom he'd reconnected with in the years before Even saving Private Ryan was a cold production with Paramount, and as Geffrey Katzenberg put it Having half of something Stehven's excited about is better than having none. That's a great quote. It's difficult to know how much time Spielberg could have dedicated to running a studio. In nine years, for example, he directed nine films. Stream workk released a number of hitsits from other directors, but for every hit there was at least one flop In fact, DreamWorks was on the verge of bankruptcy several times, and the studio began to sort of fall apart. its animation division became a separate public company, run by Jeffrey Kattenberg, for example. And in two thousand six, Stephven and his partner sold DreamWorks to Viacom this parent company of paramount for one point six billion dollars, which included about four hundred million of DreamWorks debt Stephven stayed on as a key creative partner, but it wasn't a happy marriage. Reporting at the time noted simmering tensions, back biting, an internal power plays between the co founders and the new owner In other words, just another day in Hollywood. Yeah. But two years after the deal, Paramount released Stephen from his contract fininancing from the Indian Conglomerate Alliance owned by the Ebarmis, another one of our billionaires, He relaunched DreamWorks as an independent production company. So he continued directing high profile films including Lincoln Bridge of spies and the Felm', which was semi autobiographical. And not much of a film if you ask me. I'm allowed to be a critic here I thought it was terrible. Anyway, to this day, Stephen remains the highest grossing director of all time. His films have grossed over ten billion dollars at the box office But the industry has changed a lot in the fifty years since he started out. There is no longer a sure thing at the box office and even Stephven is forced to play by the new rules. But don't worry about him too much because his bank balance is more than okay. For serving as executive producer on twenty fifteen's reboot Jurassic World, he said to have made more money than Universal itself The film grorossed a billion dollars and there's been three sequel since And in twenty seventeen, he had the opportunity to be bought out of his theme pop deal for the huge lump sum of between half a billion and a billion dollars But Stephven chose to keep that deal, leaving him with one of the most lucrative ongoing revenue streams in Hollywood. and maybe the only one that involves roller coasters. Yeah. I'm just trying to do the numbers on that. So it's thirty million dollars a year for in perpetuity, probably inlation links. It goes up with inflation. So half a billion is five hundred million So basically he thinks he's going to live at least fifteen years on from then because otherwise the numbers wouldn't work out. You should have taken them the money Anyway, God If Steven Spielberg, if you're listening, was that what went through your mind? Or maybe he's got himself a nice little cryogenic chamber and he's planning to live forever. Oh yes, of course Well, maybe it becomes part of his estate and therefore his family can keep owning it in perpetuity, right? So it's in perpetuity I'm sure there are a lot of lawyers having very serious arguments about this as we speak. Anyway, enough of that backack of the F packet financial calculations on Stehven Spielberg's behalf, It's now time to score him all our billionaire categories, which are wealth controversy P and legacy. So we'll start with wealth. Well, he's currently worth seven billion and that is a lot of money, but that only puts him at five hundred and fortieth in the billionaire stakes out of almost four thousand billionaires in the world And David Geffin said, like most very successful, very creative human beings, he likes the idea of getting paid a lot of money. But I wouldn't say it's the focus of his interests I agree with David Geffin. Obviously he's a hard negotiator, but he probably works very hard as a director. I mean, he made those three films in a year. Yeah. So I wonder if Money's not the main interest that he has. He just loves movies. I think it's a bit more like of Warren Buffet, Money was a way of keeping score of how right he is. And we heard from Spielberg earlier, I like to gamble. I like to see whether things pay off. You know how his schoolmates loved his film back in, you know, back in class.ed him. so the money is a kind of proxy for approval, love approbation. Validation. Some movie directors get it from film critics and reviews I think Spielberg geninely gets it from how well his films do at the box office. Certainly one of the richest people in entertainment of all time So wealthf, I'm going to give him a I'm going to give him a six Yeah, I think I would give him a six or a seven out of ten. Maybe seven out of ten. Yeah. Just because being a showiz billionaire, I mean there's something so glamorous about that, right? You're not making your billions laying bricks, apologies to brick layers. but making movies that is real glitz and glamour. Controversy. All pretty minor? Yeah, I mean, he's been described as a tough businessman and a ferocious canny negotiator, not terribly generous when it comes to the boardroom. I mean, his own phister found him really hard to do deals with. There's a very interesting book called Easy Riders' Raging Balls and in that is about the history of Hollywood around this time before and after the big blockbusters. and posits the idea that some critics have, which is that creation of Hollywood's franchise driven blockbuster culture left little room for sort creativity, the depth of cinon of the nineteen seventies before Jaws came along. If you remember people talk about sort of Dog Day afternoon and Serero and Taxiver French connection, taxi driver and all those kind of really gritty creative films. and then it's like, wham you got the blockbuster and we've never kind of recored that. that's the criticism sue me but I love a good blockbuster. I know I should say that, you know, yes, I wish all cinema was art house cinema and everything should be more like Dg Day afternoon. but God When you go into a cinema and you watch something like say Jurassic Park or ET for the first time. I mean, I remember watching Jurassic Park on television off of VHS and even then I found it terrifying and it completely changed me V very few films get to do that. I'm not a blockbuster hater, I have to say. No fair enough. But he has got some criticism for when you bring that kind of Hollywood treatment, the happy ending, you bring that approach to really tough issues. For example, Sindleer's list He would receive criticism because the hero was a redeemed Nazi And also Amistad, David Geffin, even one of his business partners, said it was less about slavery than about white people saving black people said white you know white saaviour complex. Right. And in Indiana Jones, the baddies are they are pretty cartoon characters. They are pretty that. Yeah. I mean, even when I was a kid and I remember watching Indiana Jones and I saw those baddies, I was like, something doesn't feel right here But you know, Steven Spielberg has also said, I've never made a movie that I consider immoral. I've never made a film that I could say, you know, I wish I hadn't made that picture because it led people astray. And I'm real proud of that. You know, He could have done much worse, I think. I think, you know, we've had ruthless business people on here. He doesn't seem to fit that category for me. He puts a bit of sugar coating on some tough issues just to make a movie successful Yes, I think culturally that can be actually much more in these days than it would have been the nineteen seventies. that can be a problem But I think he scores lowower in controversy for me. I'm going to give him a two. I even a one I think I would give him a two out of ten. Okay, twoo for you, one for me So power, what kind of power do they wield both in their industry and in the world? Well, interestingly, Spielberg is close friends with President Bill Clinton. So he was even the co producer of the big extravaganza to celebrate the millennium at the White House. But you know, it's been a long time since Clinton was president. Yeah. I mean, he's still probably in terms of movies, he's still the number one name in directing, I would say, in the world If you were to call up current Mresident in the White House and say I'm thking making a film I wonder if you'd like a part in it. I think the answer would yes