TOP-EARNING DEAD CELEBRITIES OF 2022

Checked out but still cashing in.

Rings are nice, but brands are better.

Forget about rings-how about "one brand to rule them all"? The properties of J.R.R. Tolkien, the long-dead Oxford don who wrote The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, struck gold in 2022 with the $500 million sale of a slew of Middle Earthrelated rights, including film and TV, to Embracer Group, a $1.8 billion (2021 revenue) Swedish video game conglomerate home to properties ranging from Tomb Raider to Hot Wheels.

The August deal was enough to propel Tolkien to the No. 1 slot on our annual ranking of the top-earning dead celebrities. It marks only the third time in 21 years that a dead celeb cleared a half-billion in posthumous earnings over the previous 12 months (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl did it in 2021; Michael Jackson earned a record $825 million in 2016). This year, though, the boneyard's big bucks weren't confined to the apex. For the first time, each of the top five banked $100 million or more. In all, the properties created by these 13 famous figures made a record $1.6 billion in 2022, up 70% from last year.

Who owns what of Tolkien's work is a tangled mess. HarperCollins, Amazon, Warner Bros./New Line and the Tolkien estate all hold pieces, including book publishing rights, TV series of more than four episodes and licensing to the iconic Peter Jackson films. "I can't think of a more complex example of IP ownership than this," says Bernstein analyst Matti Littunen. Specifically what Embracer bought was Middle Earth Enterprises, a holding company owned by the film producer Saul Zaentz (The English Patient, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), who first purchased the rights from Hollywood's United Artists in the mid-1970s.