Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” (a song that reportedly took 15 minutes to write) pulls in $3M each year, with the lifetime revenue of over $60M. That’s the music revenue only (which is mostly streaming these days), not counting live tour and other revenues. The fact that pretty much every single shop in the US plays the song this time of the year probably doesn’t hurt 🙂
David Copperfield, with his namesake show in Vegas, makes over $60M a year; perhaps his true magic skills are to print money?
These are just two (and not even the biggest) examples of how a hit IP can generate enormous lifetime revenue. Content is king; hit IP is King Kong.