Gambling Stories
The biggest movie bet of all time
Recently reports have surfaced that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg once gambled on how their movies would perform and while the Star Wars movie franchise did make Lucas a billionaire, it also cost him a considerable sum of money when he lost a bet amounting to $40 million!
According to sources, back in the 70's Lucas was working on the first Star Wars film and was worried about how it would perform at the box office. He turned to close friend Steven Spielberg who was, at the time, more accomplished and making Close Encounters of the Third Kind and admitted that he was worried that Star Wars was going to be complete flop. While neither of the two have ever been huge celebrity gamblers, they eventually agreed to take a bit of a gamble and swapped 2.5% of what the other's movie would end up grossing.
What started out as a friendly wager, ended up having huge repercussions when Close Encounters of the Third Kind performed well at the box office but Star Wars became a major hit and ended up becoming the movie that would change a generation.
When all was said and done, and the winnings were calculated, Lucas ended up having to pay Spielberg a massive $40 million which will go down in history as the highest stakes movie bet ever made and far more than legendary sports icon and bettor Floyd Money Mayweather has ever put down on a single wager.
While Lucas wasn't overjoyed to have to hand over $40 million for a single bet, the pain was more than likely eased by the billions he made off the Star Wars franchise in the years to come, bringing his overall net worth close to $5 billion.
