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Michael Jackson is still bad from the grave. Michael Jackson never graced Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 list during his life. In death, the King of Pop earned more in the past year than any star on that list, apart from Oprah Winfrey.
Jackson not only took the No.1 spot on our 10th annual ranking of the Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, with gross earnings of $275 million, he out-earned the other 12 deceased stars on the list combined. Still more impressive: His estate's 12-month haul was greater than the pooled earnings of this year’s two biggest living acts, U2 and AC/DC. Jackson’s posthumous earnings come from his stake in the lucrative Sony/ATV catalog, the hit Sony ( SNE - news - people ) film This Is It and renewed fan interest in music, videos and all things Michael Jackson.
Man and I can't even get a million.
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Fans, bidders and curious passersby filled the auction area at Planet Hollywood for the nearly six hours of bidding on 251 lots of Jackson memorabilia.
But there was one item that everyone really came to see — one of Jackson’s signature Swarovski crystal-studded gloves.
After nearly 150 lots and much anticipation, the glove finally made its appearance.
At an auction in November in New York, a glove Jackson wore when performing his signature moonwalk for the first time at the “Motown 25” concert in 1983 sold for $420,000.
“I’ll start the bidding at $1 just so you all can say that you bid on Michael Jackson’s glove,” auctioneer Kathleen Guzman said as bidders raised their paddles in a frenzy.
Then the real bidding began. It started at $31,000 and rose to more than $100,000 within seconds. I wish I had money to waste like that.
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Remembering Michael Jackson one year later after his death. Video after the jump.
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This image provided by Ubisoft on Monday, June 14, 2010 shows action from a new, unnamed video game featuring Michael Jackson. The as-yet-unnamed game will be among the first to use new motion-detecting camera systems to be released this holiday season for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Are you willing to buy a Michael Jackson game?
VIA; AP
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Michael Jackson set a music-industry record, thanks to a deal between his estate and Sony Corp. valued at as much as $250 million, according to people familiar with the terms.
The deal—touted by both Sony and Mr. Jackson's estate as the most lucrative recording contract ever— guarantees the estate at least $200 million. With 10 albums over seven years, the deal will involve a mix of previously unreleased songs and new packages of familiar ones.
The dollar amount is especially striking against the backdrop of the music industry as a whole, in which U.S. album sales have plunged 52% in a decade. Superstar deals worth tens of millions of dollars per album were rare even at the peak of the CD-sales boom in the late 1990s. Yet it also underscores that the biggest acts are becoming even more essential to record labels, as individual fans purchase fewer albums each year.
Since Mr. Jackson's death on June 25, Sony has sold an estimated 31 million of his albums globally. By the first anniversary of his death, his estate expects to have earned $250 million from sales of music, merchandise and tickets to the posthumous concert film "This Is It." I guess Mike is just like a painting, no one pays attention until the artist dies.
via: WSJ
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MICHAEL JACKSON'S body guards were on Good Morning America basically saying that MJ was a player. Check out the clip.
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