Sony bids $50m for Jackson rehearsal film
Sony’s movie studio has bid $50m (€30.3m) for worldwide distribution rights to a film based on rehearsal footage for Michael Jackson’s This Is It comeback concert series, according to a person familiar with the talks.
The person said the bid came after several studios, including Paramount, Universal and 20th Century Fox, were shown footage starting early last week.
None of the studios would comment on the record.
The winning studio would produce the film with Jackson’s concert promoter AEG Live, and his estate. It would go a long way to helping AEG Live recoup some of the 30-32 million dollars it spent producing the concert before Jackson, 50, died on June 25.
The bidding was reported earlier by the Los Angeles Times and industry blogger Nikki Finke.
Sony Pictures has a leg up on other bidders because Sony Music distributes Jackson’s music and is in a 50-50 partnership with his estate in Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
Sony’s bid is on par with the cost of making a mid-range budget movie, and is offset by the fact that the Sony group of companies would benefit from the music licensing rights attached to the film.
There is also massive interest in Jackson material worldwide. An estimated 31 million viewers in the US alone watched the Jackson memorial service live earlier this month, according to Nielsen Media Research – just shy of the 33 million US viewers who watched Diana, Princess of Wales’ funeral.
“This type of a story, if put together right, could be very compelling and draw a very, very wide audience,” said Mark Fleischer, an entertainment lawyer with Venable LLP and former executive at MGM Studios.
The estate and AEG Live are also negotiating with several television networks and pay-per-view outlets on a TV special that would be a stage show featuring Jackson’s music and dancing. It would be directed by This Is It director Kenny Ortega.
The selling price being discussed for the rights to show the TV special is also in the tens of millions of dollars.
General Electric’s NBC had been in talks on the TV show, but the concept, air date and cost for the rights had not been finalised, said NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks.
“We have no deal for the rights to the Michael Jackson special,” she said.
The special administrators of Jackson’s estate, lawyer John Branca and former music executive John McClain, have been moving quickly to secure the singer’s assets and cut deals to capitalise on the surge in interest in the pop star since he died.
Last week, they received signed court papers authorising them to act on his estate’s behalf until another hearing on August 3. Mr McClain has been sorting through unreleased Jackson recordings, while Sony Music is interested in releasing a commemorative album. Music sales have soared.
Jackson’s 2002 will named Mr Branca and Mr McClain as executors and directs all of his assets to be placed in a trust that will benefit his mother Katherine Jackson, his three children, and unnamed children’s charities. The estate is estimated to be worth more than $500m (€303m).
But Katherine Jackson’s lawyers are seeking a judge’s ruling on whether she can challenge the authority of the men without triggering a “no contest” clause in the trust that would cause her to be disinherited.
