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Company behind new Michael Jackson doc goes legal over footage dispute
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 30 June 2014
A production company making a new documentary about Michael Jackson has gone legal in an ongoing dispute with the late king of pop’s estate about who owns footage that will form the core of the new film.
The documentary, ‘Michael Jackson: The Last Photo Shoot’, focuses on, well, what was possibly the singer’s last magazine photo shoot, which occured in 2007 two years before his death. The shoot seemingly took place at the Brooklyn Museum Of Art for Ebony magazine, to accompany the popstar’s first interview in a decade, one of a number of attempts at a comeback in the latter years of Jackson’s life.
In amongst interviews with friends of the singer, and photographers and stylists who worked with him, the documentary is set to include previously unseen video footage of the photo shoot as well as pictures taking during it. And it’s that footage that the Michael Jackson Estate isn’t happy about.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, whoever was sitting on the footage tried to sell it to the Estate back in 2011, but after they passed on the deal, director Craig Williams acquired the rights to the content. Which, he reckons, gives him the legal right to use it in his documentary.
But legal reps for the Estate reckon that they actually own the rights in the archive footage, seemingly based on the argument that Jackson paid for the shoot to happen, and that everyone involved was appointed on a ‘work for hire’ basis, so that any copyrights would be owned by the singer himself, and therefore now the Estate. So whoever sold the footage to Williams didn’t have the right to do so in the first place.
Following plenty of correspondence between Williams and the Estate’s lawyers, the film director’s company has now gone legal, seeking court confirmation that it is indeed the copyright owner in the footage in question. Though the Estate remains adamant it is not.
Jackson Estate legal rep Howard Weitzman told The Reporter: “The makers of the documentary are attempting to exploit footage and photographs of Michael Jackson, which we believe are owned by his Estate. The documentary contains footage of Michael during private moments that he never agreed could be publicly and commercially exploited without his consent and/or involvement. Michael never authorised or approved the use of this material in the film”.
