MORE TO READ: "One Year Later: Our Complete Jackson Coverage"
Is Michael Jackson the fifth Beatle?
Indeed, if the posthumous multi-million reinvigoration of the “Thriller” superstar’s bottom line since his death last June 25 is any indication, John, Paul, George and Ringo laid a blueprint that Michael’s estate has lucratively expanded upon almost note for note.
In the last year, according to Billboard, the Jackson estate has negotiated and raised over $1 billion from record sales, the hit “This Is It” concert film, licensing, merchandising and catalogue deals.
And, like the years since the Fab Four broke up in 1970, the some of the self-styled King of Pop’s most punctual, prolific and profitable times are ahead.
Without even venturing into projects such as Katherine Jackson's just released “Never Can Say Good Bye” coffee-table tome and other family moneymakers, the expected profits from Brand MJ looks to easily reach into the hundreds of millions year after year.
Though there won’t be a repeat of the $6.5 million in unrefunded concert tickets the Jackson estate made last year, the King of Pop seems on target to in just a few years reap far greater profits than the King of Rock 'n' Roll and the Fab Four put together.
Elvis Presley's estate, which was valued about $10 million when the legend died in 1977, is currently worth about $700 million. Making most of its money from visitors to Graceland, licensed memorabilia and record sales, the estate is managed by entertainment content asset developers CKX Inc., who are the owners of "American Idol" and 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
With the remaster of the entire Beatles catalogue, which has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since being released on Sept. 9., 2009, and "The Beatles: Rock Band" videogame, the Beatles estate, which is run by the band's Apple Corp., is estimated, according to music industry insiders, to worth around $900 million.
Of course, with MJ's 50 percent stake in the SONY/ATV catalogue, which owns 250 Beatles songs, the Jackson estate is making money off the Beatles during what has also been a very profitable time for the Fab Four.
Similar to the bestselling “Beatles Anthology” series from the 1990s and 2009’s remastered release of the entire Beatles catalogue, the $250 million 10-album deal that the estate signed with Jackson’s old label Sony in March means there’ll be a lot of Michael to hear -- some new and most not.
The agreement, which runs until 2017, ensures there’ll be a steady waterfall of unreleased tunes, remixes, repackagings, with 1979’s “Off the Wall” and 1987’s “Bad” set to come out in the next year. Already, the upcoming holiday season looks rich for Jackson with the first album of unreleased material scheduled for November.
Though what that material actually will be and how new it truly is seems to be another matter.
“A lot of ‘unreleased songs’ are earlier versions of finished songs,” a former Jackson business associate told TheWrap.
