NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - NEW YORK (FORTUNE) -- Elvis and Vegas go together like peanut butter and bananas. Now an unconventional investor is poised to make Elvis the King of Las Vegas, and everywhere else, with projects like an Elvis-themed casino, Elvis-themed restaurants and a convention-sized Heartbreak Hotel.

Robert F.X. Sillerman, a Wall Street operator with a long history of minting money in the media business, bought Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE) this past February. Sillerman's latest publicly-traded incarnation, CKX, is likely to announce some sort of Elvis Presley or Graceland-themed casino in Las Vegas within a matter of weeks.

Sillerman already has 18 acres on the Strip through a real estate company he controls. Bear Stearns analyst R. Glen Reid says to also look for a 2,000-seat Elvis theater in Vegas. And get this zinger from Reid's report: "CKX apparently has the right to shut down impersonator shows." (Say it ain't so!)

In recent years, the Elvis business has been stagnating. Revenues at the company that manages his affairs, Elvis Presley Enterprises, have been flat at $40 million for five years. Elvis's 37-year-old daughter and heir, Lisa Marie, has been unhappy that the business has been going nowhere: "We were doing good, but you can't stay the same," she says. "You either have to grow or go down."

Jack Soden, a Kansas City money manager brought in to advise the Presley family, enhanced the Elvis business by expanding into merchandising and licensing. Even so, says Lisa Presley, "there's only so far you can take a family-run business. What we wanted to do was to take this to another level."

Then, Lisa says, the failure of the Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant on Beale Street in 2003 made matters urgent. "We took on more debt than I felt comfortable with," she says.

But an informed source says that Lisa Presley's spending habits were also an issue: She had been running through $5 million to $7 million a year, amounts that closely matched the annual net income of EPE. (A spokesman for Lisa Presley declined to comment.)

Under the terms of the deal between Sillerman and Lisa Presley, CKX paid $114 million for an 85 percent interest in Elvis Presley Enterprises and Lisa retained the other 15 percent. Lisa received $50 million in cash, plus $26 million in CKX common and preferred stock. Another $25 million from CKX went to pay off EPE debt. And $6.5 million went to Priscilla Presley, Lisa's mother, for use of the family name. Sillerman wasn't legally obliged to pay Priscilla anything, but the payment will no doubt make it easier for Sillerman to call her up and ask her to come to a ribbon cutting of a new Elvis property, for instance. (The balance is transaction costs.)

For its money, CKX got a 90-year lease on Graceland, stipulating, among other things, that the premises may not be used as "a massage parlor, a mortuary, or [for] the manufacture, sale, or distribution of feminine hygiene products." CKX has the rights to the Elvis name, image, likeness and trademark. CKX also gets the publishing rights to 650 songs, but owns the more valuable royalty rights to only the few songs Elvis recorded after 1973. CKX also gets royalty rights to 24 Elvis movies.

Down the road, EPE may construct more Graceland-like properties in places such as Dubai and Macau, and perhaps develop a concept similar to the Hard Rock Cafes in Europe. And then there's the Heartbreak Hotel.

Sitting kittycorner from Graceland across Elvis Presley Boulevard, it is a 128-room boutique property, perennially packed with Elvis fans. The hotel, Sillerman and Soden say, is just screaming to be expanded, upgraded, and replicated in other locations. "No question we could build a convention-sized hotel here," says Soden.

Sillerman doesn't intend to stop at the Elvis acquisition. He and his lieutenants have also purchased the smash-hit TV show American Idol and other properties from a company called 19 Entertainment, which was owned by British pop impresario Simon Fuller. Sillerman intends to buy more high-profile properties like these (think athletes and rock groups, for instance), find new ways to distribute them, and increase their value.

What would be the ultimate winning scenario for Sillerman? Think about it. Elvis, a poor boy from Tupelo, Miss., comes up to Memphis, manages to get himself into Sun Records, and lays down the track to "That's All Right (Mama)." A local radio station airs it, the calls come streaming in, and Elvis is on the way to glory.

Today's starmaking machinery is half-a-century and light years away from that process. But stars still do get born. In fact, there's a hit TV show in the business of finding them. So what if the next Elvis is discovered on American Idol?

Read the full story from FORTUNE.