Peter Jackson
Text/Lisette Voytko
Last week, visual effects company Weta Digital announced that it would sell most of its assets to video game software company Unity for $1.6 billion, a huge return for Peter Jackson, co-founder of Weta Digital and director of Lord of the Rings. Forbes conservatively estimates that the deal will officially make Jackson a billionaire. Headquartered in New Zealand, Weta Digital provided special effects support for the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures and later grew into a Mainstay of Hollywood, providing computer image compositing (CGI) for films including Wolverine (2013) and Lady and The Tramp (2019).
New Zealand regulatory documents show jackson and his wife Fran Walsh own a 60 percent controlling stake in Weta Digital, while Unity will pay $1 billion in cash and the rest in stock, so Jackson will receive $600 million in cash and $375 million in stock. In addition, New Zealand generally does not impose capital gains tax, which means that Jackson receives a higher salary than in the United States.
Jackson isn't the only celebrity who is expected to make a lot of money. The Lord of the Rings super fan Sean Parker owns a 25 percent stake in Weta Digital for a pre-tax value of $400 million. Parker is a regal tech investor known for creating Napster and serving as Facebook's first president. In addition to confirming the accuracy of the New Zealand documents, jackson, Parker and Weta Digital did not respond to requests for comment.
Jackson was already wealthy before he sold Weta Digital. Sources revealed to Forbes that Jackson made $10 million on each of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was able to share at least 10 percent of each film's box office revenue. At the time, the Lord of the Rings trilogy won 17 Academy Awards (including Best Director and Best Picture) and grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide.
Jackson earned $20 million from each film in the Hobbit trilogy and 20 percent of its back-end revenue. Image source: Visual China
The Prequel to The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit trilogy, brought Jackson even more benefits. According to reports at the time, Jackson earned $20 million in revenue and 20 percent in back-end revenue from each film. The Hobbit films grossed a combined $3 billion worldwide.
In 1993, Jackson co-founded Weta Digital with Jamie Selkirk and Richard Taylor to produce visual effects for Kate Winslet's film debut, Angel of Sin. Since then, the studio has produced several other films from the late 1990s, including the 1997 sci-fi film Contact. But it wasn't until Lord of the Rings hit the big screen that Jackson and Weta Digital became known for their outstanding visuals in the film. By applying motion capture technology to actor Andy Serkis, Weta Digital created the gollum image that is now an iconic character on the screen. In addition, the company developed custom software to render the magnificent battle scenes from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, thus taking CGI technology to the extreme at the time.
Weta Digital made the planet Pandora and the blue-skinned creatures that live in it in the 2009 film Avatar. In the final season of HBO's Game of Thrones, the company was responsible for massive battle scenes and scenes of piercing dragons. This year, Weta Digital also appeared in popular movies such as "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Commandments" and "Suicide Squad".
Major deals between Weta Digital and Unity include the former's suite of visual effects tools and its underlying technology, as well as its 275 engineers. Once the deal goes through, these assets will belong to Unity, which aims to make Vita Digital' visual effects suite available to creators around the world through the cloud.