20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

20. George Lucas Took A Lower Salary In Exchange For Full Merchandising Rights

In what's surely one of the smartest business moves in Hollywood history, George Lucas made the decision to accept a lower salary of just $150,000 for Star Wars on one condition - he retained the merchandising and sequel rights for the IP.

At the time this seemed like a slam-dunk for Fox, given that movie merch had never been a colossal money-spinner, and they had very little faith in Star Wars' commercial prospects.

But of course, Star Wars soon enough became an unprecedented phenom, kickstarting an unheard-of demand for action figures, lunchboxes, and so on.

Between 1978 and 1979 alone, Star Wars sold $100 million worth of toys, a figure that kept snowballing until it reached upwards of $3 billion per year in recent times.

As such, it's little surprise that Lucas' own net worth currently stands at a cool $5.7 billion.

His bold decision to gamble on himself also ensured future blockbusters wrote iron-clad merchandising terms into artists' contracts.