The fact that one of Hollywood’s most commercially successful directors is still thought to be worth only $13 million is kind of funny. That sounds like a lot of money until you remember that he directed a movie that made $854 million worldwide. That gap tells us a lot about how the movie business works and maybe even a little about Taika Waititi as a person.
Waititi wasn’t exactly a straight path to making hit movies. He was born Taika David Cohen in Wellington in 1975. His father was a Māori artist with a troubled past—he helped start a motorcycle club and spent time in and out of prison—and his mother was a European schoolteacher. He moved around a lot as a child between the Aro Valley in Wellington and Raukokore, a small town in the Bay of Plenty. This kind of upbringing can either break you or give you a unique sense of what’s funny. In his case, it’s clearly the second one.
He went to Victoria University of Wellington to study theater and graduated in 1997. Almost right away, he became interested in comedy. They were a comedy duo called The Humourbeasts and won New Zealand’s top comedy award, the Billy T Award, in 1999. Yes, that’s the Flight of the Conchords guy. There was no talk of Marvel contracts at that time. In small clubs all over New Zealand and Australia, it was just two guys making people laugh.
The money, what little there was, came slowly. In 2005, his short film Two Cars, One Night got him a nomination for an Academy Award, which is pretty cool and doesn’t really pay anything. Eagle vs. Shark, his first full-length movie, had a limited release in the US in 2007. 2010 saw Boy break New Zealand’s box office records. No one got rich from these movies. These were movies that made a certain kind of reputation.
A vampire mockumentary he made with Clement in 2014 called What We Do in the Shadows changed things in a different way. It quickly gained a loyal fan base and went on to become a long-running FX show. When people are loyal to their IP, they keep making money, which doesn’t always show up in their net worth, but it does over time.
After Thor: Ragnarok came out in 2017, things started to change. The movie made $854 million around the world. Many people think it’s the best movie in the whole Thor series. Waititi directed it and co-starred in it as the alien Korg through motion capture. When studios make movies of that size, directors get paid a lot of money up front—usually in the low to mid millions—but they don’t get a cut of the profits like producers or talent do with backend deals. Given how much power he had at that point, Waititi’s deal may have been better than average, but the details haven’t been made public.
In 2019, Jojo Rabbit won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, which is something that money can’t buy. He was the first person of Māori descent to win in a screenplay category. Not only does that make you feel good, but it also changes your market rate.
His work on TV, like co-creating Reservation Dogs and starring in Our Flag Means Death, shows that he’s not just looking for the biggest paycheck. It seems like Waititi chooses projects based on more than just how much money they will make. From the outside, it’s hard to tell if that’s a sign of admirable creative integrity or just a case of having enough.
With a net worth of $13 million, Taika Waititi is the kind of filmmaker who has always been great, sometimes huge, and always himself. In this business, that mix is less common than it sounds.
