Top 20 Richest Directors In The World, 2022 Updates
Top 20 Richest Directors In The World
1. Steven Spielberg Net Worth: $8 billion
Steven Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. During his early adolescence, he made his first films, all of which were shot on 8 mm film. When he was 16, Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent film, Firelight, a 140-minute science fiction adventure. Firelight cost $500 to produce and was shown at a local cinema for one night, recouping Steven’s investment. Close Encounters of the Third Kind would later be inspired by firelight.
Spielberg moved to California with his family during his high school years, where he attended California State University, Long Beach. During his college years, Spielberg worked as an unpaid intern in Universal Studios’ editing department. Later, he was given the opportunity to make a short film for theatrical release – Amblin, a 26-minute, 35 mm film written and directed by Spielberg. The film won a few awards, which impressed Universal executives enough to offer Spielberg a seven-year directing contract for Universal’s television shows.
Steven’s first significant directorial TV job came when he was asked to direct one of the segments for the 1969 pilot episode of Night Gallery, starring Joan Crawford. Following this, Universal hired Steven to direct four television movies. Steven’s first feature-length film, The Sugarland Express, was released in 1974. Sugarland Express received positive reviews, and Steven’s next feature-length film, Jaws, would propel him to the ranks of Hollywood’s greatest and most commercially successful directors of all time. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones series, and, of course, the Star Wars franchise followed Jaws.
Following these big-budget family entertainment films, Steven shifted gears and tackled more serious subjects in The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, and Schindler’s List before returning to big box-office hits like Jurassic Park 2. Indeed, Spielberg’s work ranged from science fiction to fantasy to powerful drama based on historical events.
Steven Allan Spielberg is estimated to be worth $3.7 billion as of 2022, with over 30 films, three Academy Awards, seven Academy Award nominations, and 11 of the films he directed being nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture (which Schindler’s List won).
Steven’s first significant directorial TV job came when he was asked to direct one of the segments for the Night Gallery pilot episode, starring Joan Crawford, in 1969. Following that, Steven was hired by Universal to direct four television movies. The Sugarland Express, Steven’s first feature-length film, was released in 1974. Sugarland Express was well received, and Steven’s next feature-length film, Jaws, would catapult him into the ranks of Hollywood’s greatest and most commercially successful directors of all time. Jaws was followed by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones series, and, of course, the Star Wars franchise.
See: Steven Spielberg Net Worth 2022, Car, Salary, Assets, Income
2. Martin Scorsese Net Worth: $100 million
Martin Scorsese received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from New York University and a Master of Fine Arts in Film from The Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Martin’s body of work primarily addresses issues such as Italian-American identity, Catholic tenets of sin and redemption, machismo, crime, and city tribalism. Scorsese is known for epic big budget, highly stylized productions, repeat collaborations with certain actors, such as Robert De Niro and Leonardo Dicaprio, cinematographers, and screenwriters, all of which became synonymous with a Martin Scorsese film.
Scorsese’s debut film, Taxi Driver, was released in 1976 and established him as a skilled filmmaker. The film went on to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in 1976. It was also nominated for four Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture. Taxi Driver’s critical and financial success was followed by his first major-budget production, the highly stylized musical New York, New York.
Scorsese departed from his usual themes in Age of Innocence, for which he wrote the screenplay, to explore the lost values, customs, and established order of things of a bygone era. Scorsese is also known for epic movies such as The Last Temptation of Christ.
Scorsese has produced over 25 feature films and a couple of documentaries during his career, the most well-known of which was Made in Milan about Giorgio Armani. Despite the fact that many of his films have been nominated for Academy Awards, Scorsese has only ever won one for Best Director for The Departed. For example, Scorsese’s The Aviator, an epic bio-drama about Howard Hughes, received nominations in almost every category, including Best Picture, and went on to win five Oscars. However, Scorsese lost the Best Picture award to Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.
Martin Scorsese’s net worth is estimated to be around $100 million as of 2022.
See his Net Worth here: Martin Scorsese Net Worth 2022
3. Rajkumar Hirani Net Worth: $175 million
Rajkumar Hirani is a Bollywood director who began his career as a film editor but did not have much success. He had more success as a director and producer of television commercials and ad agencies. He yearned to be a film director, so he left advertising to return to Bollywood as a film editor, landing his first big break in Mission Kashmir (2000), a Hindi action-thriller directed and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and starring Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, Jackie Shroff, and Sonali Kulkarni.
Rajkumar made his directorial debut a few years later with the comedy film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., about a goon (played by Sanjay Dutt) who goes to medical school with the help of his sidekick (Circuit, played by Warsi). The film received favorable reviews from critics, and Hirani’s direction was praised. The film was a commercial success, grossing $14 million dollars. This film established Hirani as a director to watch, earning him a nomination for Best Director at the Filmfare Awards. This was the first film in the Munna Bhai franchise, and Hirani also directed the sequel.
Hirani’s next three films, 3 Idiots (2009), PK (2014), and Sanju (2018), all received positive critical reviews after Munna Bhai. Hirani won his third National Film Award for Best Popular Film for 3 Idiots, his first Filmfare Best Film and Best Director Award, and his second Filmfare Best Screenplay and Best Story Award for the film. The film quickly established Hirani as one of the most prominent filmmakers in Hindi cinema. PK, on the other hand, was the first Hindi film to gross more than $100 million at the global box office.
Rajkumar Hirani has amassed an estimated net worth of $175 million as of 2022, making him one of the highest-paid directors in Indian cinema.
See his Net Worth here: Rajkumar Hirani Net Worth 2022, Bio, Car, Salary, Business
4. Ang Lee Net Worth: $32 million
On October 23, 1954, Ang Lee was born in Taiwan’s Pintung County. He is a well-known Taiwanese-American filmmaker on a national and international scale. The Wedding Banquet (1993), a story about a Taiwanese gay man and his American partner who had been living happily in New York when under pressure he agreed to a traditional marriage to Wei Wei, a struggling artist desperate for a green card, was one of Ang’s earlier films that were distributed internationally.
When his family wanted to throw him a lavish banquet, things went horribly wrong, resulting in him coming out to his family and eventually gaining acceptance from his family of his sexual orientation and life-partner, and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), which discussed the lives of three sisters with very different personalities against the backdrop of traditional Chinese values challenged by a modernizing world.
The lavish Sunday dinners prepared by their semi-retired Master-Chef father provide comfort and stability to the three women’s lives and romantic relationships. Lee went on to direct Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility after these two Taiwanese films, for which he received critical acclaim.
Following that, he directed a few more Hollywood films of various genres, including Ice Storm (1997), Ride with the Devil (1999), a Western, and a drama about the inner tensions of an outwardly wholesome family until the arrival of an ice storm during the Thanksgiving holiday break. Then, in 2000, Lee directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an international box-office success that earned him an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
Lee’s directorial abilities would be recognized at the highest level with the films Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2009), for which he received an Academy Award for Best Director for each of the two films. Ang Lee has been nominated for nine Academy Awards and has won three, one for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Best Foreign Film) and two for Best Director (Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi).
Ang Lee studied in Taiwan before attending the University of Illinois in the United States, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in theater in 1980. Following Illinois, Lee attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Masters of Fine Arts in film production.
During his time at the Tisch School, he met Spike Lee, who happened to be a classmate. Lee’s graduation thesis work, a 43-minute drama called Fine Line (1984), won NYU’s Wasserman Award for Outstanding Direction and was selected for national broadcast by PBS.
Ang Lee’s net worth is estimated to be $32 million in 2022.
Top 20 Richest Directors In The World
5. Christopher Nolan Net Worth: $200 million
Christopher Nolan is a British film director and screenwriter who was born on July 30, 1970, in London. Nolan grew up in both London and Chicago. He was interested in botany as a child, but when he discovered his father’s camera, he became obsessed with it and made his first film with his father’s Super 8. As predicted, Christopher dropped out of university to study filmmaking and graduated in 1993 with a degree in filmmaking.
In Hollywood, Nolan is known for being a commercially successful director as well as for his distinct style of directing, with his films grossing more than $5 billion worldwide.
Nolan rose to international prominence with his 2000 film Memento, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His next film, Insomnia (2002), was well received, but it wasn’t until The Dark Knight Trilogy, which took place between 2005 and 2012, that his directorial talent and fame became truly international. In 2006, he directed the enigmatic psychological thriller The Prestige, and in 2010, he wrote and directed the science fiction film Inception, which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Original Screenplay.
Nolan directed Dunkirk in 2017, which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Nolan has been nominated 34 times and has won ten of those nominations.
Nolan’s films are typically based on human conditions such as truth, belief, and justification, as well as metaphysical themes. He co-wrote several of his films with his brother Jonathan, and he and his wife Emma Thomas run the production company Syncopy Inc.
He is estimated to be worth approximately $200 million in 2022.
6. James Cameron Net Worth: $700 million
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian filmmaker best known for writing, producing, and directing mainstream Hollywood big-budget and science-fiction films. Cameron enrolled in a community college to study physics, but switched to reading English and dropped out before graduating. He worked odd jobs while self-teaching special effects for film technology. Cameron quit his job as a truck driver after seeing Star Wars in 1977, convinced that he wanted to make movies.
Between 1978 and 1983, he worked in a variety of capacities, ranging from production assistant to special efforts assistant to art director of a science-fiction film. He rose to prominence in 1984 as the director of The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Cameron had written the script for The Terminator but was unable to find a studio to support it, despite the fact that a few executives liked the scripts. Cameron eventually found a willing partner in Hemdale Pictures to back and produce the film, which resulted in Cameron directing and Gale Anne Hurd, whom Cameron was married to for a time, producing it. Cameron’s first film was a huge success, grossing over $78 million at the box office worldwide.
Following The Terminator, Cameron’s career soared, both critically and commercially, with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). (1991).
His two epic films, Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), won him Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. Avatar and Titanic became the second and third highest grossing films of all time, grossing $2.78 billion and $2.19 billion, respectively, at the global box office.
James Cameron, in addition to being a mainstream Hollywood director, is a National Geographic sea explorer who has produced documentaries such as Ghosts and Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2006). (2005). Cameron was the first person to solo descend to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is located on the eastern side of the Philippines in the Philippines Sea, in 2012.
By 2022, James Cameron is expected to have amassed a net worth of $700 million.
7. James Ivory Net Worth: $15 million
Ismail Merchant’s business and life partner was James Ivory, one-half of Merchant and Ivory. Their production company, Merchant and Ivory, made English films with sumptuous and lavish sets, usually set in Edwardian times, and starring top English actors and actresses such as Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, and Vanessa Redgrave. James Ivory’s beautiful direction would give these films a certain quality that became synonymous with a Merchant and Ivory film.
In their long-running collaboration, Ismail Merchant was the producer and James Ivory was always the director.
Merchant and Ivory produced 44 films, the most well-known of which are A Room with a View (1986), Howards End (1993), and Remains of the Day (1994), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. A Room with a View grossed $21 million worldwide, Howard’s End $26 million, and Remains of the Day $64 million.
Following Ismail’s death in 2005, at the age of 89, James Ivory received his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Call Me by Your Name (2018), a gay coming-of-age film starring newcomer Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer and set in beautiful Palermo, Italy.
James Ivory’s net worth is estimated to be $15 million as of 2022.
8. Ridley Scott Net Worth: $400 million
Sir Ridley Scott is best known for his science fiction films such as Blade Runner, Alien, and Prometheus. This English filmmaker and director is well-known for his atmospherically tense and visually arresting style. While most people associate Scott with science fiction, he also directed the drama-thriller Thelma & Louise and the historical bio-epics Gladiator and 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Scott, who was born in 1937, began his career as a commercial director, creating the well-known Hovis bread advertisement, which was accompanied by Dvorak’s New World Symphony.
Scott has three Academy Award nominations for directing, for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. Gladiator won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and Scott himself was nominated in the same category for his 2015 film, The Martian. Scott was never nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, but he did receive a Saturn Award and a National Board Review Award for Best Director for The Martian and Alien.
Scott and his brother Tony were both awarded a BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in 1995, and he was knighted in 2003 for services to the British film industry. In 2018, he received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.
Sir Scott is expected to have a net worth of more than $400 million in 2020.
9. Quentin Tarantino Net Worth: $110 million
The name Quentin Tarantino is associated with films that feature highly stylized violence and, at times, difficult to follow narratives and score pieces.
The most well-known of his films is undoubtedly Pulp Fiction, which was released in 1994, but Reservoir Dogs (1992) was the film that really launched his career. Pulp Fiction grossed over $213 million worldwide and was also a critics’ favorite. Kill Bill, Tarantino’s next major film, was released in two installments, Volume 1 and Volume 2, and was another highly stylized crime story that grossed $180 million and $152 million, respectively.
The Inglorious Bastards, a film that offers an alternative narrative of Nazi history, was released to critical acclaim in 2009, and was followed three years later by another critically acclaimed film, Django Unchained, a Western.
Tarantino’s films have generally been both critically and commercially successful. Some of his early films, such as Pulp Fiction, have also become cult classics.
Tarantino has won numerous industry honors, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and the Palme d’Or. He has also received five Grammy nominations and an Emmy nomination.
Tarantino’s net worth is estimated to be more than $110 million as of 2022.
10. Zhang Yimou Net Worth: $70 million
Zhang Yimou is best known for his directing work on films such as Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum, and Ju Dou, all of which starred his then-muse, Gong Li. Red Sorghum premiered in 1987 and earned Zhang the Golden Bear for Best Picture at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival in 1988.
Zhang, who was born in 1951, was part of a group of Chinese directors who were admitted to the Bejing Film Academy after the restrictions imposed during the Cultural Revolution were lifted in the late 1970s.
With Red Sorghum’s international distribution, Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern, both critically acclaimed films, were nominated for Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film at the 1991 and 1992 Academy Awards, but did not win. Zhang, on the other hand, has received numerous awards and recognition, including another Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for Hero in 2003, Silver Lion and Golden Lion prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Zhang’s most recent Hollywood film, The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon, was released in 2016.
In 1993, he was named to the jury of the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. Zhang directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games to international acclaim in the summer of 2008.
Zhang Yimou’s net worth is estimated to be $70 million in 2022.
11. Clint Eastwood Net Worth: $350 million
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is is a film director, producer, and composer from the United States. While Eastwood is perhaps best known as an iconic actor known for his Western film roles, he has also achieved directorial fame in his later years, winning an Academy Award for his Western film Unforgiven (1992) and for his sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Works in which he did not also act, such as the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (for which he received an Academy Award nomination), the drama Changeling (2008), and the biographical sports drama Invictus (2009), demonstrated Eastwood’s ability as a director as well as an actor. Another war film directed by Eastwood, American Sniper (2014), was a huge box-office success, with the largest opening ever for a Clint Eastwood film.
Clint Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. Clint Eastwood is estimated to be worth $350 million.
12. Woody Allen Net Worth: $80 million
Woody Allen is an American director, writer, actor, and comedian known for his films’ intellectual, but occasionally slapstick comedic scripts. Allen would usually star in the films he directed. Allen, born Allan Stewart Konigsberg on December 1, 1935, began directing films in the late 1960s, beginning with slapstick comedies such as Take the Money and Run (1969), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1974). (1975).
Allen’s films became more stylized and dramatic in the 1970s, evoking the styles of Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. Throughout the 1980s, Allen directed a slew of films, frequently co-starring with actress Diane Keaton and winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and, of course, Best Director.
Allen’s films in the 1980s included Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987), Another Woman (1988), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), which were praised by critics as his most creative and developed.
From the early 1970s to the present, Woody Allen directed over 50 films. Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Match Point (2005), and Midnight in Paris (2006) are undoubtedly Allen’s most well-known films (2011).
Woody Allen has been nominated for 16 Academy Awards, winning four, one for Best Director and three for Best Original Screenplay. He was also nominated for nine British Academy Film Awards. Allen received the BAFTA Fellowship from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1997. Bullets over Broadway earned him the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2014, as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named first on the Writers Guild of America’s list of the “101 Funniest Screenplays.”
Woody Allen is estimated to be worth $80 million.
13. Francis Ford Coppola Net Worth: $400 million.
Francis Ford Coppola is best known for directing The Godfather, which was released in 1972 and has since become an all-time classic in the history of Hollywood filmmaking. The Godfather was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Godfather Part II, which was released in 1974, was the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Critics praised the film, which earned Coppola three more Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. He was only the second director (after Billy Wilder) to be honored three times for a film sequel.
Coppola’s next major project after The Godfather was Apocalypse Now (1979). Apocalypse was widely praised for its realistic depictions of the Vietnam War. Coppola became one of only eight filmmakers to have won the Palme d’Or twice with the film. Coppola had previously won the Palme d’Or for The Conversation, which was released in 1974.
Francis Ford Coppola was born on April 7, 1939, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors and producers of all time. His films have received 80 Academy Award nominations, with 23 wins, 39 BAFTA nominations, with 11 wins, and 56 Golden Globe nominations, with 17 wins. Coppola has been retired since the release of his last film, The Rainmaker, in 1997. He is now the owner of a vineyard and produces his own family-brand of wines.
Francis Ford Coppola was worth approximately $400 million at the time of his retirement.
14. Timothy Burton Net Worth: $130 million
Timothy Walter Burton is best known for his fantasy and horror films, which are somewhat gothic but feature misunderstood and lovable protagonists. Beetlejuice, released in 1988, was followed by Edward Scissorhands in 1990 and Sleepy Hollow in 1999. Burton is also well-known for his animated works, including Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Corpse Bride (1994). (2005).
Burton is also known for films based on fairy tales or children’s books, such as Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and, most recently, Dumbo. Tim Burton, who was born on August 25, 1958, collaborated frequently with actor Johnny Deep and actress Helena Bonham Carter, Burton’s former domestic partner.
To date, Burton has directed over 20 films and has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, four times for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, and three times for a BAFTA. Burton wrote and illustrated the poetry collection The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published by Faber and Faber in 1997, and The Art of Tim Burton, In 2009, he released a collection of his drawings, sketches, and other artwork.
Tim Burton’s net worth is estimated to be around $130 million as of 2022.
15. Roman Polański Net Worth: $50 million
Roman Polaski is a Polish-French film director who rose to prominence in the United States after directing Rosemary Baby (a horror-thriller) in 1968. Polanski’s films have ranged from literary adaptations such as Tess (1979), Macbeth (1971), and Oliver Twist (2005) to suspense thrillers such as Frantic (1988) and art films such as The Pianist (2002).
However, Polanski has not filmed in the United States since the late 1970s, having fled the country while awaiting sentencing for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.
Despite the fact that Polanski has not directed in the United States since fleeing the country, he has received 28 Academy Award nominations, eight of which he has won, 27 BAFTA nominations, six of which he has won, and 19 Golden Globe Award nominations, seven of which he has won.
His film Chinatown (1974) received 11 Academy Award nominations, but only one was awarded for Best Original Screenplay. Critics consider Chinatown to be one of the best American mystery crime films, inspired by the real-life California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the turn of the twentieth century. Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson starred in the film.
Roman, who was born on August 18, 1933, spent many years as a child concealing his identity in order to avoid the Holocaust. Polanski’s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four friends were brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969, causing him to go through another extremely difficult period in his life.
Despite the difficulties Roman Polanski has faced, such as hiding from the Holocaust, fleeing the United States, and facing the murder of his pregnant wife, Polanski has become very successful, amassing a fortune of more than $50 million as of 2022.
16. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: $40 million.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a Mexican film director, screenwriter, and producer. His stories are frequently set in different countries and deal with the human condition. Gonzalez made international headlines with the critically acclaimed films Babel (2006), Birdman (2014), and The Revenant (2015). (2015).
His debut film, Amores Perros, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize. In 2000, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His first American film, 21 Grams, premiered in competition at the 60th Venice International Film Festival, where Sean Penn was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actor.
In 2003, it was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for lead actress Naomi Watts and one for supporting actor Benicio del Toro.
Iárritu was born in Mexico City on August 15, 1963, as the youngest of seven children. Alejandro spent a year in Europe as a young student, and he later credited the places he visited with influencing the settings for his films. Alejandro has directed 13 films in total.
Seven of Alejandro’s films have received 33 Academy Award nominations, with eight winning, 33 BAFTA Award nominations, with eight winning, and 20 Golden Globe Award nominations, with six winning. Babel was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including two for Iárritu for Best Picture and Best Director. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture Drama, was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing, and was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, including two for Iárritu for Best Picture and Best Director.
Alejandro won three Academy Awards in 2014 for Birdman: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). The following year, he won his second Academy Award for Best Director for The Revenant, making him only the third director in history to win back-to-back Oscars, and the first since 1950. The Revenant also earned him a DGA Award, making him the first person in history to win two in a row.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is estimated to be worth $40 million in 2022.
17. George Lucas Net Worth: $5.4 billion
George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and businessman best known for creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. He was the owner of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, and Industrial Light & Magic before selling them to The Walt Disney Company in 2012.
Lucas’s first film, American Graffiti, released in 1973, was inspired by his childhood in 1960s Modesto, California. American Graffiti, produced by his newly formed Lucasfilm, was a critical and commercial success, receiving five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture.
However, it was Lucas’s subsequent film that made the difference. Lucas’s next film, Star Wars, was released in 1977 and cemented Lucas’s reputation as a brilliant director and writer. Star Wars went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, earning six Academy Awards. Star Wars would become a cultural phenomenon, providing a common reference point for people from all over the world. The sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) were produced and co-written by Lucas (1983).
George Lucas’s second global phenomenon was the creation of the Indiana Jones films, which included Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989), and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2001). (2008).
George Lucas received four Academy Award nominations for his work on American Graffiti and Star Wars, including Best Director and Best Writing. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director for both Star Wars and American Graffiti.
George Lucas is worth a staggering $5.4 billion, though the sale of Lucasfilm contributed significantly to his net worth.
18. Alfred Hitchcock Net Worth: $200 million
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director and producer best known as the Master of Suspense. His filmography boasted over 50 motion pictures. On both sides of the Atlantic, he is without a doubt one of the most studied and influential filmmaker in the history of cinema.
His best-known film, Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins and released in 1960, was a masterpiece that was remade in 2000 with Vince Vaughn in the title role. Aside from Psycho, Hitchcock’s other works, such as Dial M for Murder and Vertigo, are regarded as among the most suspenseful films of all time.
Films like Rebecca (1940), Lifeboat (1944) Notorious (1946), and Spellbound (1945) also count among his greatest, with Rebecca winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, although Hitchcock himself was only nominated as Best Director. He was also nominated for Lifeboat (1944) and Spellbound (1945), although he never won the Best Director Academy Award.
Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, London. He began his career in the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer after working as a technical clerk and copywriter for a telegraph-cable company. With the British-German silent film The Pleasure Garden, he made his directorial debut (1925).
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), his first successful film, laid the groundwork for the thriller genre. His 1930s thrillers, The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), are still considered among the best British films of the twentieth century.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock directed over 59 feature films, 11 of which were silent. Hitchcock’s net worth was estimated to be around $200 million at the time of his death in April 1980.
19. Spike Lee Net Worth: $40 million
Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee was born on March 20, 1957. He is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and professor. Since its inception in 1983, his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films.
Spike is most famous for his film Malcolm X released in 1992. He first made his directorial debut with She’s Gotta Have it in 1986.
Lee’s films typically examine race relations in the black community, urban crime, and poverty, all while addressing political issues of the time. He has won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Student Academy Award, a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, two Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, and the Cannes Grand Prix for his work. In addition, he has received an Academy Honorary Award, an Honorary BAFTA Award, an Honorary César Award, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
Spike was a classmate of Taiwanese American director Ang Lee at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
The Library of Congress has chosen Lee’s films Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls, and She’s Gotta Have It for preservation in the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
As of 2022, Spike Lee is worth about $40 million.
20. Toyin Abraham Net Worth: $1 million
Toyin Abraham born September 5, 1982, is a Nigerian film actress, filmmaker, director and producer. She started acting in 2003, when Bukky Wright, a Nigerian film actress, came to Ibadan (where she lived) to film a film. Toyin Abraham has produced, directed, and starred in over 28 Nigerian films, including Alani Baba Labake and Ebimi ni.
During the 2013 Best of Nollywood Awards, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Yoruba film titled Ebimi ni, alongside Joke Muyiwa, who was nominated for Best Lead Actress in a Yoruba film titled Ayitale. Toyin has been asked by politicians to campaign for them based on her acting career.
In one of the programs for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election campaign in 2015, the actress stated that she was willing to die for the People’s Democratic Party, the platform on which Jonathan was running. However, she later apologized to her fans for the remarks and urged Nigerians not to spill their blood for any politician.
Toyin Abraham is thought to be worth about $1 million in 2020, and she is one of the richest and most influential actress and director in Nigeria.