Tyler Perry is Hollywood’s newest billionaire

Tyler Perry might want to buy himself something fancy because the guy has officially cracked Hollywood’s coveted billionaire list. Forbes, the magazine tasked with keeping track of such things (and correcting celebrity statuses when they reportedly aren’t quite accurate), made the announcement this week with a new feature profile on the Madea creator.According to the publication Perry’s net worth is $1 billion - he’s earned more than $1.4 billion in pretax income since 2015. That can’t be too surprising to fans who have eagerly followed the producer, writer, director and actor’s career. At this point he doesn’t just attach his name to his projects, but he also owns a 330-acre studio lot in Atlanta as well as the rights to all of the content he generates. As Forbes puts it right in their headline, he went from “poor as hell” to changing showbiz forever.“I mostly go on my gut and my instinct. I like to challenge the system and see what I can do differently,” Perry explained to Forbes. Over the years that has included striking deals to own the things that he creates, which is a bargain many producers don’t typically get. Of course Hollywood severely underestimated the popularity of Perry’s Madea character, which gained a following (including Oprah Winfrey) back when he was still touring and renting out theatres with the money he had saved up selling cars and working as a bill collector. Now his properties expand to 1,200 TV episodes, 22 feature films, and more than two dozen stage plays. Add in a $150 million per year deal with ViacomCBS to produce new content and a stake in BET+ (the US streaming service that debuted last fall), and he’s pretty set.Perry has homes in Atlanta, New York, Wyoming and Los Angeles, which he famously rented to Prince Harry and Meghan when they moved there earlier this year. And he also has not one, but two planes to help fly him to all of his various locales. Considering he was raised in poverty in New Orleans, is a high school dropout, and he was once homeless, the road towards becoming a billionaire wasn't an easy path. And it’s probably safe to say that many other producers in the industry are slapping themselves for not investing in his talents sooner.

 

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“I love when people say you come from ‘humble beginnings.’ [It] means you were poor as hell. Ownership changes everything,” Perry told the publication. “You got to understand, I had no mentors. My father doesn’t know anything about business, and my uncles and mother, they know nothing about this. I didn’t go to business school. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned in progress.”The creative adds that when he first moved to Hollywood, Chuck Lorre was interested in making a show revolving around his life, but he couldn’t get anyone to bite and so the executive producer made Two and a Half Men instead. Eventually Perry moved back to Atlanta and started the studio from the ground up to make TV on his own terms. When that proved successful he went on to make films. And now he does a mix of everything, without a non-compete clause. That means he can work with any studio or broadcaster that he chooses, and because he owns all of the content he sees a higher return than most.Perry’s new official status as a billionaire puts him in the same category as the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Not too shabby for a guy who is about to turn 51 years old. “My father was a subcontractor, and he would get paid on Fridays and be so happy that he had made $800," Perry told Forbes. "But I would watch the man that owned the house sell it and make $80,000. So I always knew that there was more power in the man that owned the house rather than the man that actually was working on it and building it. So I always wanted to be the guy that owned the house," he continued."Ownership for me was easy because I was underestimated," he added. "They said, 'Sure, you can own it.' They didn't think it'd be worth anything."How wrong they were.[video_embed id='-1']BEFORE YOU GO: Giraffe makes funny faces while using tongue as toothpick[/video_embed]