According to Forbes, Tyler Perry is officially a billionaire.
The details of his success are written in a long-form article entitled “From “Poor As Hell” to Billionaire: How Tyler Perry Changed Show Business Forever“. The filmmaker owns the entirety of his creative output, including more than 1,200 episodes of television, 22 feature films and at least 2 dozen stage plays, as well as a 330-acre studio lot at the edge of Atlanta’s southern limits.
Here’s a breakdown of how Forbes is calculating Tyler’s milestone net worth:
- $320 million for his entire library of movies, TV shows, plays, etc., as he owns 100% of the content he’s created.
- $300 million in cash and investments.
- $280 million for Tyler Perry Studios, which sits on 330 acres in Georgia.
- $60 million for his equity stake in BET+, the streaming service that debuted last year.
- 40 million in homes and toys.
Add it all up … and that’s a cool $1 billion.
Well, his movies alone have grossed nearly $1 billion to date, and he owns the rights to all of them.
On how he learned the value of ownership at a young age:
My father was a subcontractor, and he would get paid on Fridays and be so happy that he had made $800… But I would watch the man that owned the house sell it and make $80,000. So I always knew that there was more power in the man that owned the house rather than the man that actually was working on it and building it. So I always wanted to be the guy that owned the house.
Ownership for me was easy because I was underestimated. They said, ‘Sure, you can own it.’ They didn’t think it’d be worth anything.
On diversity in his movies:
I wanted to foster an environment where minorities and women and LGBTQ, anybody who wanted to come and work and do a great job was welcome. What I found is, if you invest in the underdog, if you invest in the people who haven’t had the opportunity, the level of gratitude and understanding for what is happening for them is so powerful. It’s just wonderful.
Forbes also reports that Perry has earned in excess of $1.4 billion since 2005. “I love when people say you come from ‘humble beginnings,’ ” he said to the outlet. “[It] means you were poor as hell.”
According to Forbes, Perry used his ownership of all his creative output to broker a deal with ViacomCBS that pays him $150 million a year for new content and gives him an equity stake in BET+, the streaming service it debuted last September. He has homes in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as two private jets.
The mogul joins a group of Black billionaires that includes Robert F. Smith, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, David Stewart, Jay-Z and Kanye West.