Highest-Paid Dead Celebrities: This Writer Earns Half-A-Billion From The Great Beyond

Seems not even the boneyard is immune from inflation. The 13 departed artists, athletes and entertainers on this year’s list of the top-earning dead celebrities earned a record $1.6 billion, making it a 72% increase over last year’s total. It’s by far the biggest 12-month haul since we started tracking graveyard earnings in 2001 – and, for the first time ever, the top five made more than $100 million each.

At the top of the heap: J.R.R. Tolkien, the long-deceased author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The former Oxford don, who died of pneumonia in 1973, earned $500 million from the sale of Middle-Earth Enterprises, which handles intellectual property rights for motion pictures, videogames, merchandise, and more to Swedish gaming company Embracer in August.

Following close behind is basketball legend Kobe Bryant with $400 million from his estate’s sale of his stake in the BodyArmor sports drink company to Coca-Cola. It marks the largest acquisition in the soft drink firm’s history.

Elvis Presley may have left the building, permanently, but the King of Rock N’ Roll is still an economic powerhouse. Forty-five years after his death, Elvis’ estate generated $110 million in income. The lion’s share was made from box office and merchandise sales at Graceland, Presley’s Memphis home—just $5 million of that came from rights for Elvis, the Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic.

Overall, the music of yesteryear is seen by investors as a reliable income stream. Nearly $700 million of the $1.6 billion in total earnings came from the estates of the nine musicians on the list, including David Bowie ($250 million), Michael Jackson ($75 million) and “Hallelujah” songwriter Leonard Cohen ($55 million). Some of those earnings came from one-time sales. The estate of Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro, for instance, sold his publishing and recording royalties for $25 million in November 2021. Others, like Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison remain mainstays on the list due to their annual recurring royalty streams.

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