Competing Bob Marley Movies Clash Over Music Rights

Despite the involvement of Bob Marley's widow, the planned Weinstein Co. biopic about the reggae icon has hit a road block acquiring the music rights to Marley's catalogue. Martin Scorsese's Marley documentary has already licensed the songs and has the support of the Marley family-owned Tuff Gong Pictures. "Martin Scorsese doesn't want to go out with a competing project," said Chris Blackwell, president of Marley's music publisher Blue Mountain Music. Scorsese's documentary was set for release in February 6th, 2010, which would have been Marley's sixty-fifth birthday, while the Weinstein biopic, based on Rita Marley's biography No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley, was due out late 2009. Rita was to executive produce the biopic, while son Ziggy Marley is producing the Scorsese biopic. "All our efforts and support are currently directed toward the documentary," said Ziggy. "We believe that this project is the best way to represent our father's life from his perspective, and any other film project pertaining to our father will be empty without his music to support it."

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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

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