Disney once offered 13-year-old Jason Weaver $2 million to sing as young Simba in 'The Lion King'. His mother and manager, Marilyn 'Kitty' Haywood, rejected the lump sum and negotiated about $100,000 upfront plus royalties.
Weaver said the first offer was meant to be a take-it-and-go deal. He said his biggest paycheck before that had been about $80,000, for playing a young Michael Jackson. For a middle-class family in Chicago in the early 90s, he said, that was a major number.
Haywood was not impressed by the size of the check alone. Weaver said she had backed Aretha Franklin and sang with the Chicago group Kitty & the Haywoods, and she understood the value of recurring income. She saw that Disney had a habit of re-releasing old classics and that the company was coming off the success of 'Aladdin' and 'Beauty and the Beast'.
That call changed the economics of the deal. Weaver said Disney was not doing royalty deals for newcomers at the time, only for 'established huge pop stars'. But Haywood believed the film would make far more over time. Weaver said she wondered whether her son would still be able to get paid when he turned 40, and he said she was right.
Since then, 'The Lion King' has grown into a much larger franchise, with theme park attractions, dolls, T-shirts, video games and more. Weaver said the film made 'hundreds of, if not billions of dollars' for Disney. The original movie has grossed nearly $1 billion at the box office, and the 2019 remake pulled in more than $1.6 billion.
Weaver said he has since made more than the $2 million he rejected, though he has not disclosed his net worth or how much the film still pays him. Estimates put his worth between $4 million and $7 million. He said the royalties keep coming whether he has a job or not, and that the income has been 'so helpful'.
The structure of the deal is the real story here. A one-time payout is easy to spend and easy for a company to control. Royalties, by contrast, align incentives over time and let the person who created value keep a claim on future success. Capital rewards clear rules, and Haywood appears to have read Disney’s business better than Disney expected.
For the taxpayer, there is no direct bill here. But the lesson matters in any market: recurring ownership beats a quick check when an asset can be monetized again and again. Disney built a franchise. Weaver’s mother insisted her son should keep a slice of it.
