4.5 billion dollars were the earnings post inflation for his four Star Wars movies.
3.6 billion were the earnings post inflation on the Lion King movies.
On top of that, he’s had 30+ voice roles in documentaries, TV shows, video games and commercials as a voice actor.
Problem though is nothing last forever and at age 91, there’s the reality he might not be able to lend his voice for these iconic characters anymore.
Which is why he just sold his voice.
It’s not been disclosed on price, but he just announced he’s retiring from voice acting and signed a deal with Disney to allow them to use his voice going forward and use AI to replicate it.
The first time something like this has been done with a major actor/studio and nobody really has a firm idea of what he was paid.
It’s also an amusing history, seeing he wasn’t credited in the first Star Wars movie.
The actor who originally played Darth Vader in Star Wars was David Prowse, who thought he’d get to voice the character. George Lucas hated his voice for the role and tried recruiting Orson Welles. Money wise that didn’t work and when negotiating, Lucas was advised to not pick Welles for being too recognizable.
The end result was James Earl Jones, who was a low level actor at the time and so unknown, they didn’t even credit him in the first two movies.
Today, while many voice actors can do a perfect recreation of the James Earl Jones voice, he’s become so known for the role, they used AI partially to make the Obi Wan series, not telling people until after it came out.
That’s some history for the value, but now to figure out what it’d be worth for James Earl Jones to sell his voice to Disney for the rest of time.
Figuring that out, a look at salary.
$7,000 was the payment James Earl Jones received in 1977 for the first Star Wars movie.
Which sounds low, but it should be noted that Harrison Ford only made $10,000. Which he’d decades later get a reported salary of 25 million for Star Wars Episode 7.
James Earl Jones, while not jumping up as much as Harrison Ford has jumped up, claiming he made 1 million dollars for the Lion King in 1994.
James Earl Jones also has a reported net worth of 40 million dollars, where despite only having limited roles in Star Wars projects post the original trilogy, he was still paid over $500,000 to voice Darth Vader for several minutes in Star Wars Rogue One.
There’s also more to Star Wars outside the box office.
Star Wars has made 69 billion as a franchise.
42 billion off merchandise.
10.3 billion off movies.
9 billion off home media
5 billion off games
1.8 billion off books
1 billion off TV
Most of those are things that James Earl Jones could be used for, from games to action figures to cartoons, his voice can be present.
This makes it clear the number shouldn’t be a fixed payment, but a royalty.
Alec Guinness was the biggest actor in the original Star Wars movie, but he had two conditions for joining.
Condition One-Obi Wan had to die, so he’d not get sucked into a sequel.
Condition Two-He’d get 2% of the toy revenue, learning George Lucas ducked his salary as a director to get all the toy revenue. He even contributed more to the script and Lucas gave him .25% more.
That deal ended up earning Alec Guinness estate over 100 million dollars, before a deal was eventually made to buy them out of the royalty for cash.
For James Earl Jones, I’d hope any deal he signed gave him some royalty on products/games with his voice used and for movies, some sort of deal giving him .1% of whatever the budget for the movie was as a base for a salary.
This is also a case which is particularly interesting, because it’s like it or not the future.
There’s a 0% chance voices and faces aren’t recreated with AI in the future and there’s no way studios will let people like Morgan Freeman or Whoopi Goldberg go without getting voice rights.