The article is very deceptive. First it says she's worth one billion, then it says the franchise. But one billion what? Retail? And over how many years? What percentage of that is actually profit for Disney? And what percentage does she get? Artists are notoriously ripped off in initial record deals. Some lose money after production deductions. The media did the same thing with the Winnie the Pooh franchise, greatly distorting its value, or at least calling retail sales numbers profit. And they like to throw out numbers like one billion because it sounds good. JK Rowling was worth one billion for several years.
I have a theory that numbers given out by the media can be divided by a factor of ten. It's like a billion people watched the Super Bowl or the Oscars, when possibly that number is everybody that has access to a TV. I remember a Toronto station reporting that 3,000 films were debuting at the festival when in fact that was the number of submissions. The actually number shown was about 250, at least half of which were shorts. Even athlete contracts given by the media are usually the maximum if all performance targets are met, and often include loans, mortgages, etc.
this doesn't really surprise me though.
