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Tom Hanks’ performance in Forrest Gump is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest and it’s a film that has stood the test of time. Decades later, the question often gets asked of how rich Forrest Gump would be in real-life and now we know.
1994’s Forrest Gump and everyone involved in the film absolutely cleaned up at the 67th Academy Awards. The film released in 1994 took the 1995 award show by storm, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Forrest Gump the film earned over $678 million at the global box office on a budget of just $55 million. But Forrest Gump the fictional character earned a LOT more money than the film through his ping pong endorsements, fishing industry monopoly, and savvy investments in Apple, the most valuable company in the world.
How Rich Forrest Gump Would Be In Real-Life
A recent video from @GuacamolePhil brought back the age old question of ‘how rich would Forrest Gump be IRL?’ and he does a pretty good job at breaking it down:
His math of how rich Forrest Gump would be is as follows:
1. The Alabama estate where his mother lived and where he grew up that is valued at roughly $1 million.
2. His ping pong sponsorship money was a $25K check. In today’s dollars that would be worth $163K.
3. Forrest Gump’s stake in Bubba Gump shrimp company which had a monopoly after the hurricane. He estimates that stake would be worth around $4 million.
4. Lastly, the investment in Steve Jobs’ Apple back in 1980. He assumes Forrest Gump would have invested $100K at the time for ~3% of the company. Now, this is a stretch because it’s not apples-to-apples, but let’s just assume Forrest Gump had a 3% stake in Apple back then. That would now be worth around $81 BILLION.
In the quest to figure out how rich Forrest Gump would be IRL, 3% seems generous. But even 1% doesn’t seem unrealistic. That would mean Forrest is still worth $27 billion.
Interestingly, there was almost a sequel to Forrest Gump. A script for the film was turned in the night before 9/11 but Tom Hanks and director Robert (Bob) Zemeckis felt the world had moved on from the project.