What Is Rian Johnson's Net Worth?
Rian Johnson is an American writer, director, and producer who has a net worth of $150 million. Rian Johnson has written and directed the films "Brick" (2005), "The Brothers Bloom" (2008), "Looper" (2012), "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (2017), "Knives Out" (2019), and "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" (2022), and he also produced "Knives Out" and "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." Rian has won numerous awards for his work, and he earned an Academy Award nomination for writing the "Knives Out" screenplay. "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" grossed $1.333 billion at the box office, making it 2017's highest-grossing movie, and as of this writing, it's the ninth highest-grossing film of all time. Johnson has also directed episodes of "Terriers" (2010) and "Breaking Bad" (2010; 2012; 2013), winning a Directors Guild of America Award for "Breaking Bad" in 2013. In March 2021, Rian and his producing partner, Ram Bergman (who runs the production company T-Street with Johnson), signed a $469 million deal with Netflix to release two "Knives Out" sequels on the streaming platform.
Early Life
Rian Johnson was born Rian Craig Johnson on December 17, 1973, in Silver Spring, Maryland. He grew up in Denver, Colorado, and San Clemente, California, and he graduated from San Clemente High School in 1992. Much of Rian's 2005 film "Brick" was filmed at San Clemente High. After graduation, Johnson enrolled at the University of Southern California, and in 1996, he graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. His brother Aaron and cousin Nathan both worked on "Brick," Aaron as a music mixer and Nathan as a music producer, musician, score engineer, score producer, and composer. Nathan has worked as a composer on all of Rian's films except "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."
Career
Johnson has said that the 1977 film "Annie Hall" inspired him to become a director, stating, "It moved me in a way that very few other films have moved me. That's something that, I pray to God, if I am able to keep making movies, I can only hope, twenty years down the line maybe, I'll be able to approach." Before releasing his first feature film, Rian wrote, directed, produced, and edited the short films "Ninja Ko, the Origami Master" (1990), "Evil Demon Golfball from Hell!!!" (1997), "Ben Boyer and the Phenomenology of Automobile Marketing" (2001), and "The Psychology of Dream Analysis" (2002). He made his feature film debut with the 2005 crime drama "Brick," which he wrote, directed, and edited. The film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, grossed $3.9 million against a $450,000 budget, and received a John Cassavetes Award nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards. Johnson directed The Mountain Goats music video "Woke Up New" (2008) and the concert film "The Mountain Goats: The Life of the World to Come" (2010), and in 2008, he released his second feature film, "The Brothers Bloom." Starring Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody as the title characters, "The Brothers Bloom" earned Rian a Bronze Horse nomination at the Stockholm Film Festival.
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Johnson directed three episodes of the critically-acclaimed AMC series "Breaking Bad," "Fly" (2010), "Fifty-One" (2012), and "Ozymandias" (2013). He won a Directors Guild of America Award for "Fifty-One" and two Gold Derby Awards for "Ozymandias." He reunited with Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the 2012 film "Looper," which grossed $176.5 million against a $30 million budget and was featured on several top 10 lists of the year's best films. Rian's fourth feature film, 2017's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," was a massive success at the box office, bringing in more than $1 billion, and it received four Academy Award nominations and won Empire Awards for Best Film and Best Director. In November 2017, it was announced that Johnson had been hired to direct a trilogy of "Star Wars" films that "will be a completely new story, with original characters, set in a different galaxy."
Rian wrote, directed, and produced the 2019 mystery film "Knives Out," starring Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, and Christopher Plummer. The film grossed $311.4 million at the box office, won several Best Original Screenplay awards, and earned Johnson an Academy Award nomination. The sequel, "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022 and was the second runner-up for the festival's People's Choice Award. In March 2021, it was announced that Rian would be creating, writing, directing, and producing a mystery series for Peacock called "Poker Face," starring Natasha Lyonne.
Knives Out Deal
In March 2021 it was revealed that Netflix had acquired the rights to "Knives Out" from Johnson in a deal that had a total value of $470 million. Of that amount, it's believed that $300 million would be used on production, leaving $170 million left for Rian personally.
Personal Life
Johnson married Karina Longworth in 2018. Karina hosts the podcast "You Must Remember This," which is about "the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century," and it has earned accolades from the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards, "Rolling Stone," "Time," "Esquire," and "Vulture." Rian is a banjo player and folk singer, and he formed the folk duo the Preserves with his cousin Nathan.
Awards and Nominations
In 2020, Johnson received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for "Knives Out." The film's screenplay also earned him awards from the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle Awards, Phoenix Critics Circle Awards, Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards, Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards, Denver Film Critics Society, Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle Awards, Odyssey Awards, and Huading Awards as well as nominations from the Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Awards Circuit Community Awards, Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, Fantastic Fest, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, Gold Derby Awards, Hollywood Critics Association, Online Film & Television Association, and Writers Guild of America. "Knives Out" also received a Philadelphia Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film, a Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle Award for Best Studio Film, and a PGA Award nomination for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures.
Rian won a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series for the "Breaking Bad" episode "Fifty-One" in 2013, and he earned two Gold Derby Awards for directing the episode "Ozymandias," Drama Episode of the Year (2014) and Drama Episode of the Decade (2019). For "Brick," he won a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision, an Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best First Film, a Citizen Kane Award for Best Directorial Revelation, the Deauville Film Festival Grand Special Prize, a Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Director, and Best Original Screenplay awards from the Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards and Utah Film Critics Association Awards. Johnson received a Saturn Award for Best Writing and an Empire Award for Best Director for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," and he earned Best Original Screenplay awards from the Austin Film Critics Association Awards, Florida Film Critics Circle Awards, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, National Board of Review Awards, Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards, Utah Film Critics Association Awards, and North Carolina Film Critics Association Awards for "Looper."
