had plenty of success while living – he wrote 43 books which were adapted into 16 feature films – but it wasn’t until he was long dead that his fortunes hit the stratosphere.$684 million forto build out a sweeping flood of programming from the British novelist’s trove of stories includingdeal signed in 2018 to produce a slate of animated TV shows, one of which is based on Willy Wonka’s orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa Loompa candy makers, for $1 billion.
Prince takes the No. 2 spot this year with $120 million, thanks to a deal his siblings made to sell an estimated 43% of the estate, which includes his catalog with hits like “When Doves Cry” and “Little Red Corvette,” to music publishing and management company Primary Wave. They can all thank an escalating arms race for content that in recent years has enriched the world’s most enduring creators — bothA licensing deal between Netflix and Dr. Seuss Enterprises, for instance, almost doubled the late author’s average earnings over the past five years. In all, this year’s Dead Celebrities earned a collective $960 million, more than triple last year’s haul.