Freddie signed a will in September 1991, that gave half of his vast wealth to Mary and the rest to his parents and sister. Most of his friends, including lover Jim Hutton, were given £500,000 each or a house. Mary was Freddie's bedside holding his hand when he passed away at the age of 45.
Although their engagement ended when he told her he was gay, the pair remained remarkably close for the rest of his life. And after his death in 1991 he left her 50 per cent of his future earnings. A further 25 per cent went to his parents and 25 per cent to his sister.
Freddie Mercury – US$50 million.
He was devastated by her decision, he said. However, Mercury did leave him with £500,000 (nearly $1 million, per the 1991 conversion rate), which he used to move back to Ireland. He also wrote a book about their relationship, simply titled Mercury and Me. Hutton died on January 1, 2010, after a long battle with cancer.
Austin inherited Mercury's One Garden Lodge mansion and the bulk of Mercury's estate, with the remainder going to his parents and sister and about $692,000 apiece going to Freestone and Mercury's boyfriend, Jim Hutton.
Three years after Freddie's death, Jim published a book about his time with the singer titled Mercury and Me. He worked as Freddie's gardener after moving into the singer's Kensington mansion, and preferred to stay away from the rock and roll lifestyle.
Mary Austin chose not to marry painter Piers Cameron, the father of her two children, Jamie and Richard, and divorced her husband Nick Holford. She later explained: “I lost my family, really, when Freddie died. He was everything to me, apart from my sons. He was like no one I had met before.”
Who earns Freddie Mercury's royalties and how much do they get? After his death on November 24, 1991, Freddie gave his home, 50 percent of his recording royalties and most of his wealth to Mary Austin, with the remainder going to his parents and sister.
He left one quarter of his future earnings from Queen to his parents and another quarter to his sister. Apart from some minor bequests, everything else went to Mary. But Mary admitted not everyone was happy with this decision: "Some of the fans even told me I was only the keeper of the house.
On June 2, 1979, Hutton died of liver cancer, two days after his 45th birthday, and a month after being diagnosed.
Queen Still Hasn't Made Any Money Off 'Bohemian Rhapsody'
“We thought it would do well in the end, we felt good about it, but we didn't realize it would do that well,” May said in a recent interview on BBC Radio 2's The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. “It's incredible around the world. It's like a billion-dollar movie.”
Well, it still seems to be lasting: Queen Productions Ltd generated £38.92 million ($53.5m) from royalties in its last fiscal year (the 12 months to end of September 2021, aka FY 2021), according to newly-published UK annual accounts analyzed by MBW. That figure was down by just 6.6% year-on-year.
With his farewell look straight at the camera as the song ends, Mercury whispers "I still love you", directed to his fans, which are his last words on camera. Director of the video Rudi Dolezal comments, "AIDS was never a topic. We never discussed it. He didn't want to talk about it.
His father Bomi attended Freddie's funeral after his sad death from bronchial pneumonia, and the small family moved up to Nottingham away from London to be out of the spotlight.
Yes! authorship royalties. A part of the distribution rights royalties (because of his co-ownership of Queen Ltd.)
The Advocate said in May 2018, "Closeted throughout his life, Mercury, who was bisexual, engaged in affairs with men but referred to a woman he loved in his youth, Mary Austin, as 'the love of his life,' according to the biography Somebody to Love: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Freddie Mercury."
Freddie did love Mary but then he also loved Jim. He loved his friends. "Mary was there when he made the transition to being gay and she stood by him. Freddie felt huge guilt more than anything for what he put her through in 1975 when he broke their engagement and told her the truth about himself.
What was Freddie Mercury's Net Worth? Freddie Mercury was a British singer/songwriter and musician who had a net worth of $50 million dollars at the time of his death in 1991 (after adjusting for inflation).
Mary Austin was never legally Freddie Mercury's wife, but she was the only true love in the life of the Queen frontman. Although the rockstar ended his romantic relationship with Austin in 1976 and was famously rumored to be gay, he always spoke of Austin with the kindest words.
Yet, Queen's income by the time of the News Of the World album was great enough to, well make the album great enough. In later albums, Queen decided to stop crediting and paying each band member separate amounts just for composing a track, everything was by Queen, for Queen, and split evenly in four payments.
It was well received by audiences and became a major box office success, grossing over $910 million worldwide on a production budget of about $50 million, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2018 worldwide and setting the all-time box office records for the biographical and drama genres.
Currently, Queen's catalogue is owned by Disney Music Group which purchased the rights for a reported $10 million in 1991. Speaking with CNN, a source close to the acquisition revealed that the discussions were “well underway” and the deal would be finalised “within one month.”
These days, Mary, 70, lives a quiet life in the London mansion Freddie left to her where Queen fans still make regular visits to pay their respects. She has been married twice but is now divorced. She shares two grown-up sons, Jamie and Richard, with one of her exes, Piers Cameron.
Rami himself has revealed that he is lip-syncing, but it's not just Freddie's voice that we hear. "It is an amalgamation of a few voices," he told the Metro US. "But predominantly it is my hope and the hope of everyone that we will hear as much Freddie as possible. I think that is the goal for all of us."