What Is Amy Pascal’s Net Worth?
Amy Pascal is an American business executive and producer who has a net worth of $100 million. Amy Pascal became a secretary for producer Tony Garnett at Kestrel Films, then she served as Vice President of Production at 20th Century Fox from 1986 to 1987. In 1988, she began working for Columbia Pictures and was responsible for movies such as “A League of Their Own” (1992), “Groundhog Day” (1993), and “Little Women” (1994). After leaving Columbia in 1994, Amy was the President of Production for Turner Pictures before rejoining Columbia in 1996 as President. Pascal became Chairman of SPE’s Motion Picture Group in 2003, and three years later, she became Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. She has been responsible for movies such as “The Da Vinci Code” (2006), “The Social Network” (2010), “Moneyball” (2011), “American Hustle” (2013), and several James Bond films.
Amy was elected to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors in 2013. In December 2014, a hack of Sony’s computer system revealed emails between Pascal and Scott Rudin regarding her upcoming meeting with President Barack Obama and included racially insensitive comments. Amy launched Pascal Pictures in 2016 and has produced more than a dozen films, including “Ghostbusters” (2016), “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (2017), “Molly’s Game” (2017), “The Post” (2017), “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018), “Spider-Man: Far From Home” (2019), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021), and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (2023). In 2014, “Forbes” ranked her #28 on its list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.”
Early Life
Amy Pascal was born Amy Beth Pascal on March 25, 1958, in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of Barbara and Anthony H. Pascal, and she grew up in a Jewish household. Barbara owned the art bookstore Artworks and worked as a librarian, and Anthony was employed by the RAND Corporation as an economic researcher. After graduating from Santa Monica’s Crossroads School, Amy earned an international relations degree from UCLA while working as a bookkeeper at her alma mater.
Career
Pascal’s career began as producer Tony Garnett’s secretary at Kestrel Films, an independent production company. She later moved to 20th Century Fox, where she worked as Vice President of Production from 1986 to 1987. In 1988, Amy was hired by Columbia Pictures (which was sold to Sony the following year), and she was responsible for developing films such as “Awakenings” (1990), “A League of Their Own” (1992), “Groundhog Day” (1993), and “Little Women” (1994). “Awakenings” and “Little Women” each earned three Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, and “A League of Their Own” and “Groundhog Day” were preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” In 1994, she left Columbia Pictures and spent two years as Turner Pictures’ President of Production. In 1996, Pascal returned to Columbia Pictures after Turner Pictures and Warner Bros. merged, and she became the president of the studio. In 1999, she was promoted to Chair of Columbia Pictures. From 2003 to 2015, Amy was the Chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s (SPE) Motion Picture Group, and in in 2006, she became the Co-Chairperson of SPE. At Sony, Pascal oversaw the production of films in the Spider-Man and James Bond franchises and the Oscar-nominated films “The Social Network” (2010), “Moneyball” (2011), “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012), “American Hustle” (2013), and “Captain Phillips” (2013). She oversaw Sony Pictures Television with SPE CEO and Chairman Michael Lynton as well, and it was reported that in 2014, she was the only woman working for Sony who was making more than $1 million per year.
In February 2015, Amy announced that she would be leaving Sony in May, but she later said that the company had fired her. She launched her own production company, Pascal Pictures, in 2016 with a four-year contract for distribution and funding through SPE. Pascal Pictures’ first project was 2016’s “Ghostbusters,” which grossed $229.1 million at the box office. In 2017, Amy produced “Spider-Man: Homecoming” ($880.2 million), “Molly’s Game” ($59.3 million), and “The Post” ($179.8 million), followed by “Venom” ($855 million), “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” ($35 million), and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” ($358.7 million) in 2018. With Sony, Pascal also produced 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home” ($1.132 billion) and “Little Women” ($206 million), 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” ($506.9 million) and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.920 billion), and 2023’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($675.4 million). In May 2019, it was announced that Pascal Pictures was leaving Sony for Universal Pictures.
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Sony Pictures Hack
In December 2014, a group known as “Guardians of Peace” hacked into the Sony computer system, resulting in internal company documents being stolen. The fallout from the hack became a significant diplomatic incident in relations between the U.S. and North Korea. It was reported that the stolen documents included an exchange between Amy and producer Scott Rudin in which she asked him what she should say to President Barack Obama at a Hollywood fundraiser. Pascal joked that Obama might like “Django Unchained,” “The Butler,” or “Think Like a Man,” which many people felt was racially insensitive. Amy apologized for her comments, stating, “The content of my emails were insensitive and inappropriate but are not an accurate reflection of who I am.” She added that “although this was a private communication that was stolen, I accept full responsibility for what I wrote and apologize to everyone who was offended.” The civil rights organization Color of Change created a petition in December 2014 that called for Sony to fire Pascal. The Sony hack also revealed a gender pay gap at the company, and when Amy was asked about it in an interview after she left Sony, she stated, “People want to work for less money, I’ll pay them less money. I don’t call them up and go, ‘Can I give you some more?’ … what women have to do is not work for less money…. People should know what they’re worth and say no.”
Personal Life
Amy married Bernard Weinraub on August 9, 1997, and they have a son named Anthony. Bernard is a playwright, and he formerly worked for “The New York Times” as a foreign correspondent. Pascal has served on the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles’ Honorary Committee, and she has donated money to charities such as Teen Line. In 2008, she received the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award for “her commitment to cultural diversity, social responsibility and philanthropy.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization that “confronts anti-Semitism, hate, defends the safety of Israel and Jews worldwide, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations through its advocacy and education programs, investigations, research, reporting, media, films, and museums.” During the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Amy was one of nearly 200 members of the entertainment industry to sign a Creative Community for Peace petition condemning Hamas.
Awards and Nominations
Pascal has received three Academy Award nominations, Best Motion Picture of the Year for “The Post” (2018) and “Little Women” (2020) and Best Animated Feature Film for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (2024). “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” also earned her awards from the Gold Derby Awards, North Dakota Film Society, and Chicago Indie Critics Awards and nominations from the BAFTA Awards, Black Reel Awards, and International Online Cinema Awards. For 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” Amy won awards from the PGA Awards, Online Film & Television Association Awards, Awards Circuit Community Awards, Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle Awards, and Music City Film Critics’ Association Awards and received a nomination from the Gold Derby Awards. Pascal won the Milestone Award at the 2010 PGA Awards, and she earned nominations for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures for “Molly’s Game” (2018), “The Post” (2018), and “Little Women” (2020).
Amy has been honored with an “Elle” Women in Hollywood Awards’ Icon Award (1999), a Women in Film Crystal Award (2001), a Hollywood Film Awards’ Leadership Award (2003), an ICG Publicists Awards’ Showmanship Award (2007), and a Costume Designers Guild Awards’ Distinguished Collaborator Award (2022). She received Online Film & Television Association Award nominations for Best Picture for “The Post” and “Little Women,” and she also earned an Awards Circuit Community Award nomination, a Gold Derby Award nomination, and a Chicago Indie Critics Award nomination for “Little Women.” Pascal received a Chicago Indie Critics Award nomination for “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in 2022.
Real Estate
In January 2022, Amy was revealed to be the buyer of the late Gloria Vanderbilt’s former New York City apartment. She paid $2.5 million for this unit and $950,000 for a separate Vanderbilt unit in the same building. In Los Angeles, her longtime home is a 9,000 square foot mansion set on over an acre that is worth $8-10 million today.
