“Greed in the end, fails even the greedy.” ( Louis, n.d. ) This wise quote about greed can teach us all something. It would have been especially useful to the executives of 20th Century Fox in the year of 1977 to take note of and follow. In 1977 20th Century Fox partnered with George Lucas on the Star Wars films and were in negotiation of Mr. Lucas’s pay. The decision that 20th Century Fox decided on was to offer George Lucas a sizable pay cut estimated at twenty thousand dollar reduction in exchange for the merchandising rights for any and all Star Wars films. At the time saving twenty thousand dollars on one employee’s income may have sounded like a savvy business decision. I am sure that 20th Century Fox thought that they would have the benefit of not paying out such a high cost and didn’t …show more content…
The merchandising rights from the movie Star Wars and any and all additional movies is estimated have brought in over 3 billion dollars and is still climbing. If 20th Century Fox would have not been greedy with the upfront money that they were willing to pay out to George Lucas and considered the consequences of signing over these rights if the movie was wildly successful, they would have reaped all of the benefits of the profits. Since the franchise is still growing and making sequels they could have created a long lasting revenue stream for decades to come. Since 20Th Century Fox was in a prime position to create such a deal with a producer then other alternatives could have been examined. For example, they could have offered George Lucas a 5-10% in royalties for 5 years on all merchandise produced by the first Star Wars movie and a reduced salary. This would have given then the reduction in immediate salary cost and less risk in loosing profits if the merchandising brought in a lot of revenue for an extended period of time. That is just one example that seems obvious to me at the