Days after learning of ‘Lifetime’s plan to release a biopic on the star, Aaliyah‘s immediate family has now vowed to block the movie’s production, reportedly planning to take legal steps towards having it shut down before filming begins this summer.
Full story below…
TMZ reports:
Aaliyah‘s family is on the attack against “Lifetime” … vowing to stop production on her biopic.
Lifetime plans to start filming this summer … chronicling the R&B singer’s life and tragic death. 17-year-old Disney actress Zendaya has been cast as Aaliyah — who died in 2001 in a plane crash.
Aaliyah’s uncle and former manager, Barry Hankerson, tells us the family is pissed that no one from the network contacted them about the movie.
Hankerson says the family will block any attempt on Lifetime’s part to use any of Aaliyah’s music. He says the family has hired a lawyer and will do everything they can to block release of the flick.
The family is not opposed to a big, theatrical film, but thinks a TV movie is too small for someone as big as Aaliyah.
We called Lifetime … so far no response.
Her family’s reported plans to block Barry from making the movie come as fans of the singer accuse him of using the project as a money making venture, launched to support the financially unstable ‘Blackground Records’, at which Aaliyah was signed to before her passing in 2001.
Our take on the matter?
Well, in what will see ‘Blackground’ lose whatever happens, the Haughton‘s attempts to stop the movie’s throws a major spanner in ‘Lifetime‘s works, now forced to produce and promote a movie about a woman whose own mother is against its conception.
For, unlike TLC‘s biopic, Aaliyah‘s story- should ‘Lifetime’ tell it- will be nothing more than a fluff piece designed to romanticise her stomach churning relationship with the ever-creepy R.Kelly, present her uncle as anything but a money-hungry manager who introduced her to said creep, while downplaying the bond she shared with her mother, brother and father…the heroes of her untold story.
Heroes, who knew the person and not the performer behind the star.
After all, while Jennifer Lopez had Selena‘s parents to turn to when tasked with portraying the singer, one wonders how Zendaya hopes to build and subsequently present an accurate version on Aaliyah.
YouTube?
Music videos?
Stories relayed to her by those who’ve made it their mission to present her parents as a docile couple who agreed and consented to moves they in fact detested?
Which one? Guess we’ll find out should the Haughton‘s fail to put a stop to the flick and ‘Lifetime’s plans come to fruition.
Until then…