“Sure, I’ll gamble with that”: the 1976 wager that made Steven Spielberg $40m richer
Having spent 50 years as one of the most famous filmmakers on the planet, nothing Steven Spielberg does anymore can be considered a risk, thanks entirely to the fact that he’s Steven Spielberg.
He wants to remake one of the greatest and most iconic musicals of all time, having never gone near the genre before? Sure, why not, and there’s an argument to be made that his West Side Story is better than the original. He wants to make a semi-fictional biopic about himself? Go for it, with The Fabelmans earning rapturous acclaim and seven Academy Award nominations.
Spielberg’s name has become so ingrained in the cinematic and cultural consciousness that even when he takes those kinds of swings, everyone expects them to be great because of who he is and what he’s done. On paper, he was tailor-made for adapting Roald Dahl’s The BFG, and just because it was a turgid flop, it doesn’t mean it was a gamble when he signed on.
You’d maybe have to go back to AI Artificial Intelligence for the last time Spielberg truly went out on a limb, and that was only because he picked up the baton from his idol, Stanley Kubrick. Otherwise, you’d likely have to go even further back to The Color Purple, with the filmmaker’s first adult, serious drama putting his professional pride and reputation on a prospective chopping block.
That said, he was fond of dicey wagers back in the day, but he did at least win the bet. In 1976, shortly after George Lucas had wrapped production on Star Wars, he was wracked with doubt and nervousness. Spielberg, who also had a sci-fi blockbuster releasing in cinemas the following year, had a sneaking suspicion that his friend’s trepidation would be for nothing.
Lucas thought Close Encounters of the Third Kind would earn more money at the box office than Star Wars, but Spielberg disagreed. Naturally, they struck a bargain. “He said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade some points with you. You want to trade some points?'” the latter remembers being asked. “I’ll give you 2.5% of Star Wars if you give me 2.5% of Close Encounters.'”
Spielberg was confident in his film, but not as confident as he was in Lucas’ picture. “So I said, ‘Sure, I’ll gamble with that,'” the director agreed. All they had to do now was sit back, wait, and see the ticket sales start rolling in, and by the time the dust had settled, Star Wars had earned more than two and a half times as much as Close Encounters to become the highest-grossing movie of all time.
The Quentin Tarantino movie John Travolta can’t stand for one reason: “Other than that, pitch perfect”
The 1989 movie that gaslit Robin Williams out of a role: “They said I didn’t reply soon enough”
The 2010 phone call from Leonardo DiCaprio that won Daniel Day-Lewis an Oscar: “Never told me to this day what he said”
Lucas probably didn’t cry himself to sleep over giving up a slice of the profits when a galaxy far, far away made him a billionaire and one of the richest people in Hollywood. To this day, though, Spielberg continues to collect the occasional check from the 1977 movie that launched one of pop culture’s most enduring franchises, and he’s estimated to have pocketed around $40 million so far.
“Of course, I was the happy beneficiary of a couple of net points from that movie, which I am still seeing money on,” the three-time Academy Award winner admitted. There’s winning a bet, and then there’s winning a bet that lands you an eight-figure windfall and continues paying out almost 50 years later.
