LOS ANGELES, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Major Hollywood movie studios found themselves in a frenzied bidding war over the weekend to acquire film rights to late pop star Michael Jackson's last rehearsals footage, with Sony Pictures emerging as the front-runner, a report said on Monday.
AEG Live, the concert promoter behind Jackson's planned 50-concert tour at London's O2 Arena, offered the rights to some 1,200 hours of rehearsal footage to all the major movie studios last week, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Michael Jackson performs during a Victory Tour concert in Toronto, in this October 5, 1984 file photo |
Sony, Fox, Paramount and Universal submitted bids, but Sony's aggressive 50-million-dollar offer, coupled with the fact that its music division controls distribution of Jackson's output as an adult solo performer and retains the right to block a competing studio from using his songs, put the studio in the strongest position.
The plan is for a movie to be theatrically released in October, according to the report.
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Michael Jackson performs during a Victory Tour concert in Toronto, in this October 5, 1984 file photo |
Sony also controls "sync" rights to most of Jackson's songs. Such rights are involved whenever recorded music is used in combination with visual images in a production, an important component in the property's future DVD release.
Meanwhile, AEG were also selling the broadcast rights for a prime-time TV special using staging and choreography Jackson created for the "This Is It" concerts, prompting fevered competition among networks over the weekend.
The TV special, which features a superstar ensemble that might include Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, would be broadcast in September, according to the report.
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