Zac Efron Net Worth: What Box Office Data, Forbes and the Emmys Show
- Editor's note: This article was first published on May 19, 2022.
- Zac Efron, 34, has a new film in theaters.
- Box Office Mojo shows the film took $3,827,715 in U.S.
Editor’s note: This article was first published on May 19, 2022. Its original text was lost when Focus Hillsboro rebuilt its website, so it was rewritten and re-checked against the primary sources linked below on Oct. 24, 2026.
Zac Efron, 34, has a new film in theaters. Firestarter, a new adaptation of Stephen King’s novel from Universal and Blumhouse, opened on Friday, May 13, in theaters and on Peacock. Universal’s film page casts Efron as Andy, a father who has spent more than a decade on the run to hide his daughter’s power to create fire.
Box Office Mojo shows the film took $3,827,715 in U.S. and Canadian theaters over its first weekend, May 13 to 15, placing fourth from 3,412 theaters. That is ticket sales, not Efron’s pay.
The same gap runs through any attempt to measure his wealth. We found no net worth figure published by Efron himself, and the numbers online are third-party estimates. What can be documented is the career behind them.
From San Luis Obispo to East High
Efron was born Oct. 18, 1987, in San Luis Obispo, California, and grew up in nearby Arroyo Grande, according to Britannica. He took acting classes at Allan Hancock College and had guest roles on series including Firefly, ER and CSI: Miami.
His breakthrough came on Jan. 20, 2006, when Disney Channel premiered High School Musical, with Efron as basketball star Troy Bolton. Disney’s D23 encyclopedia says the first film drew 7,732,000 viewers, a record for the network. The sequel debuted Aug. 17, 2007, and 17.24 million viewers watched its premiere.
The third film went to theaters instead of television. High School Musical 3: Senior Year opened in the U.S. on Oct. 24, 2008. D23 says its $42 million opening was the biggest ever for a musical.
Box office is not pay
Efron moved into studio films while the Disney series was still running. The table below lists worldwide grosses as Box Office Mojo showed them in archived copies from December 2021 to May 2022.
| Film (year) | Distributor | Worldwide box office |
|---|---|---|
| High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) | Walt Disney Studios | $252.9 million |
| Hairspray (2007) | New Line Cinema | $203.6 million |
| 17 Again (2009) | Warner Bros. | $136.3 million |
| Neighbors (2014) | Universal Pictures | $270.7 million |
| The Greatest Showman (2017) | 20th Century Fox | $436.4 million |
Those totals are what audiences spent on tickets, which theaters and distributors share. They are not Efron’s earnings, and we found no studio disclosure of what he was paid for any of these films.
The one pay estimate from a named outlet we could trace comes from Forbes. Its Celebrity 100 list, published June 11, 2008, ranked Efron No. 92 and estimated his pay at $5.8 million for June 2007 to June 2008.
Forbes said those estimates did not deduct management, agent or attorney fees. That makes the figure one year’s estimated earnings before costs, not a measure of his wealth.
Netflix, a Daytime Emmy and the 2022 slate
By 2019 Efron was working with Netflix, playing serial killer Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Britannica notes.
The next year brought his own series. Down to Earth with Zac Efron followed him and wellness expert Darin Olien through eight episodes in places including Iceland, Costa Rica, Sardinia and Peru. Netflix billed it as a show about “healthy, sustainable ways to live.”
At the 48th Daytime Emmy Awards Fiction and Lifestyle ceremony on July 18, 2021, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences named him the winner for Outstanding Daytime Program Host for the series. The award went to Efron as host. The travel, adventure and nature program award that night went to another Netflix series, Tiny Creatures.
His 2022 work began in Australia. Gold, a Stan Original film directed by Anthony Hayes, opened in selected Australian cinemas on Jan. 13 and began streaming on Stan on Jan. 26, the South Australian Film Corporation said.
Firestarter followed in May, and one more film was on the calendar.
As of mid-May, Apple’s press page listed The Greatest Beer Run Ever, directed by Peter Farrelly, with Efron and Russell Crowe, for fall 2022. Apple describes it as based on the true story of John “Chickie” Donohue, who left New York in 1968 to bring beers to childhood friends fighting in Vietnam.
Update, Oct. 24, 2026
Apple released The Greatest Beer Run Ever on Sept. 30, 2022, and Netflix released a second season of Down to Earth, set in Australia, on Nov. 11, 2022. A24 released The Iron Claw, in which Efron plays one of the Von Erich wrestling brothers, in theaters on Dec. 22, 2023.
Top image: File photo, 2017: Zac Efron at the Baywatch premiere in Sydney, Australia. Photo: Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).
