How much is Jon Favreau worth?
| Net Worth: | $105 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actor |
| Date of Birth: | October 19, 1966 (age 56) |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 6 ft (1.83 m) |
About Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau is an actor, writer, director and film producer who has created several cinematically influential movies over the course of three decades. He has a recognizable face that people will see in Netflix cooking shows, his guest appearances as Monica’s boyfriend in Friends, and as Tony Stark’s muscle in the Iron Man series and several other Marvel movies. What people might not know is that he is often at the helm of most of these projects, writing and directing them, and that is what made Favreau becomes the movie industry titan that he is today.
Jon Favreau first drew attention to himself for the movie Swingers, which he wrote and starred in alongside Vince Vaughn. It was 1996, these two men were charming, good-looking newcomers, and it looked like the actors were going to be groomed into movie stars. Though that was true for Vaughn, Favreau was more interested in the production of films more than being the star.
It was clear that he was more in to the idea of being behind the camera than in front of it. It is even reported that he only starred in Swingers due to the budget being too low to afford anybody else.
Swingers was a hit and it put a spotlight on not only the two stars, but everyone else in the movie, including Heather Graham. The film went on to gross $4.6 million in the box office, which would send a film studio in to bankruptcy these days, but as the film had a budget of just $200,000, it was a payday for all the young actors involved.
Besides Swingers, Iron Man is another tent-pole in Jon Favreau’s career that saw him do something completely original with a superhero movie. No other film had depicted a superhero like Iron Man did, and the tone was so unlike anything else in the genre that it created the structure that is the DNA of every single one of the next 25 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
Jon Favreau has now become somewhat of an auteur in creating visually stunning and detailed computer generated environments. He was even employing special effects in movies as early as 2003 when he directed Elf, which was influential in its use of forced perspective and absurdly irresistible stop-motion. Favreau followed up one of the greatest Christmas movies of all-time with Zathura, which would delve even deeper in to experimenting with CGI.
His dabbling in CGI would hit its peak when he agreed to direct two almost completely CGI Disney reboots, with the first being the spectacular re-imagining of The Jungle Book, and the second being his almost shot for shot remake of The Lion King. Though The Jungle Book wasn’t the first “live-action” remake of a Disney movie, it was the biggest technological leap forward and by far the most groundbreaking.
If Favreau thought The Jungle Book was a success when it grossed $966.6 million, it must have come as a shock when The Lion King made $1.663 billion despite the remake receiving overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. Sitting comfortably at 9th place, Favreau’s version of The Lion King is in the top 10 highest grossing films off all-time, and it’s the highest grossing animated movie ever.
Favreau essentially kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe when he signed on to direct Iron Man, the first movie in the franchise. He followed the film up by directing the sequel, and though Favreau turned down the offer to direct Iron Man 3, he remained the executive producer and continued to portray “Happy”, Tony Stark’s bodyguard.
Since its inception, Favreau has acted in seven MCU movies, which is more than most actors who play superheroes. In fact, Jon Favreau has been an executive producer on every Avengers and Iron Man movie. It is clear that it isn’t just a job for him, these are characters that the producer has so much knowledge about and admiration for, meaning he can give so much creative input that few executive producers ever can. He contributed so much to the success of the series, and that is why he was named a “Disney Legend,” due to his major contributions to The Walt Disney Company.
Besides directing and producing billion dollar movies, Favreau continues to work on television projects, mainly focusing on docu-series type shows. Favreau turned his hobby of cooking into a Netflix original passion project, Chef Show, in which he travels North America with Roy Choi, who created the food-truck business as we know it today.
Even with being busy producing and directing, Favreau still lends his voice to animated movies and acts in projects other than his own. He voiced a computer generated character in Solo: A Star Wars Story and The Mandelorian, played himself in the Entourage movie, and was directed by Martin Scorsese in The Wolf of Wall Street. The man has energy galore and has built a thick Rolodex of contracts and studio executives who love him.
Favreau can make small budgets go along way, which is part of the reason why producers looked to him for so many projects. His movie Elf had a production budget of $33 million, and the movie went on to gross $223.3 million. That’s the box-office intake only and does not include enormous sales for DVDs, toys, and even a video-game. Later in his career he would direct Chef, which made five times its $11 million budget, banking $48.4 at the box office. It was later bought by Netflix for syndication, and even spawned a series on Netflix called The Chef Show.
Favreau’s Total Net Worth
Favreau has earned more from his producing and behind the scenes work, like directing and writing, than he has in his acting career. He earned $10 million (on the frontend) from directing and producing Cowboys & Aliens in 2011. In total, from all of his work in the movie business, it is estimated that Jon Favreau has earned around $150 million.
Of that amount, $7-8 million is expected to have been paid in business related costs. The remainder, $142.5 million, will have been taxed at a rate of around 49% as Favreau has been residing in the state of California. After tax, it is estimated that his career earnings are at around $72.67 million dollars, having paid $69.83 million dollars in taxes.
Jon Favreau married Joya Tillem in 2000 and they have three children together, Max, Madeleine and Brighton Rose. The couple’s relationship has appeared tight and the family together on all fronts. Jon has not found himself in any legal trouble or had a reported problem with alcohol or indeed any health or mental health struggles.
It is likely that Favreau has managed his finances from a family perspective which would be more risk averse but still likely returning solid returns on his investments. He has bought a little real estate like the $5.25 million property in Venice, California, that he acquired in 2016. He has also likely invested in blue chip companies and likely realized some good returns considering the stock market’s growth over the last few decades. Likely around $30-45 million dollars, after deducting likely losses, management and trading fees.
Overall, even if Favreau has spent some $8-10 million dollars on himself and his family, he probably also possesses assets worth some $5-6 million. He will still have a net worth of around $105 million dollars.
Summing-Up
It isn’t hard to see why Jon Favreau’s net worth is estimated to be more than $105 million. Favreau’s success story is a natural one as he went from an independent filmmaker and climbed the ladder to one of Disney’s go-to directors. The reason he is adored by executives and was even shortlisted to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens is because he is constantly using his films to learn about industry advancements, and the special effects you see in most movies are due to the work that Jon Favreau has done himself.
