[imagesource: Ronald Dumont / Daily Express / Getty Images]
You may not recognise that man above, but you’ll almost certainly have read some of his fantastic work.
Despite the fact that he died in 1990 from cancer at the age of 74, he appears to have found the golden ticket this year.
Yes, we are talking about Roald Dahl, who comes out tops in Forbes’ list of the highest-paid dead celebrities of 2021.
That’s down to the fact that in September, Netflix paid a reported $684 million for the Roald Dahl Story Company.
Over the course of the next few years, the streaming giant will turn many of his famous stories into movies and series, and it paid handsomely for those rights.
The streamer now has total control of Dahl creations that have sold more than 300 million books and spawned blockbuster films, including the two based on Charlie that together have grossed more than $1 billion at the box office.
It has plans to create Dahl-themed video games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more.
With Dahl’s heirs having a roughly 75% stake in the Roald Dahl Story Company before the sale, the author earned $513 million in 2021.
A quick note on the methodology of Forbes’ calculations:
This year’s Dead Celebrity ranking includes pretax earnings from sales, streams, licensing deals and other sources between October 30, 2020 and October 30, 2021, as well as estate acquisitions made or announced during the same period.
Coming in a very distant second is Prince, with $120 million, and Michael Jackson in third with $75 million.
The King of Pop’s music racked up 1,3 billion streams over the course of the past 12 months.
In fourth, we have Charles M. Schulz, better known as the man behind the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon, having struck a deal with Apple TV+ for a second season of Snoopy in Space!, which will start streaming later this month.
Fifth goes to Dr. Seuss, with $35 million:
Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) sold almost 7 million print books in the U.S. over the last year—despite controversy about racist imagery in some of his early works—up from 6 million copies in 2020 and continues to profit from a years-long courtship of Hollywood led by his widow before her death in 2018.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises president Susan Brandt leaned into streaming, forging a deal with Netflix to create the big-budget animated series Green Eggs and Ham. The second season premieres Nov. 5.
Striking it rich with Netflix seems to be the way forward.
Via Newsweek, here’s the rest of the top 13:
6. Bing Crosby ($33M)
7. Elvis Presley ($30M)
8. Arnold Palmer ($27M)
9. Gerry Goffin ($23M)
10. Luther Vandross ($21M)
11. Bob Marley ($16M)
12. Juice Wrld ($15M)
13. John Lennon ($12M)
Juice Wrld, by the way, is a rapper who died in 2019 at the age of 21.
His album, Legends Never Die, was released the following year and became the fifth best-selling album of the year. It’s also the most successful American posthumous album release of the last two decades.
Now you know.
