Elvis leads list of top-earning dead celebrities

Earnings for our top dead celebrities were evaluated for the period between October 2006 and October 2007. That ruled out recently departed superstars like Luciano Pavoratti, who passed away in September. The bulk of his earnings during our time frame, we determined, were made while he was living.

Newcomers to the Dead Celebrities list include "King of Cool" Steve McQueen ($6 million) and the "Godfather of Soul" James Brown ($5 million). Rapper Tupac Shakur rejoins the list with $9 million — he debuted back in 2002, before falling off — following the sale of catalog rights in May for upward of $5 million. Over a decade after his unsolved 1996 murder in a drive-by shooting, Tupac remains a hot commercial property. Said to be in development are a Tupac biopic, videogame and — gasp! — Broadway show.

Estimating income for celebrities is no small feat. But for dead celebrities, it can prove daunting. Such was the case when attempting to value the income of recently departed mega-producer Aaron Spelling, whose estate still collects royalties for every Love Boat or Melrose Place rerun that airs anywhere on the planet.

While royalties have long been a staple source of income for the Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, who collects them has now become a hotly debated issue in the entertainment community.

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Anna Strasberg, widow of famed acting coach Lee Strasberg, inherited the bulk of the Marilyn Monroe estate from her late husband. Two years ago, she sued two photo agencies run by heirs of Monroe photographers for licensing images without her permission. (One, Sam Shaw, shot the iconic picture of Monroe over a subway grate for The Seven Year Itch.) Strasberg claimed that the images were part of Monroe's intellectual property and therefore only her heirs should profit.

But in May, both a California and New York court ruled against her, claiming that the concept of a post-mortem right of publicity did not exist until legislation to that effect passed in 1984, so Monroe could not have bequeathed them at the time of her death. (That law, dubbed The Dead Celebrities Act, grants posthumous rights for 70 years.) Those decisions pave the way for other firms to license Monroe images without cooperation from her estate.  

That has made celebrities who died before 1984 fair game for licensing deals without the permission of their heirs. In early October, California passed a bill that effectively overrides the recent court decisions and grants posthumous publicity rights to celebrities who died pre-1984 to their heirs.  It's still unclear what the net effect of the legislation will be on the disputed Monroe images.   

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