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MJ Rehearses, AllGood To Sue
A cease-and-desist letter has been issued to the reps, including Frank Dileo, and AEG Live, even as Jackson hunkers down on a Burbank soundstage with 10 dancers and a famous choreographer for rehearsals.
Allocco provided Pollstar with a copy of the non-compete, signed by himself, Dileo and four others, but not including any Jackson family members, that purports to prevent any of Gary, Ind.’s most famous family from negotiating another event for 18 months from Nov. 26, 2008.
Allocco said his company originally intended to stage a Jackson Family Reunion concert at New Jersey’s
“Michael personally assured me he intended to do this concert, first at Giants Stadium and then in Texas,” Allocco said. “When the O2 concerts came up, we realized we had a date conflict and agreed to hold a date in 2010, which we have.”
That places the putative Jackson Family Reunion well after the conclusion of MJ’s O2 run. However, as Jackson famously told a press conference announcing the O2 shows, “this is it” – and he has ceased cooperating with AllGood for the Texas show, Allocco alleges.
“We’re ready to work with them; all we want is our show,” Allocco said of the disagreement. “If they won’t work with us, we have no choice but to enforce the non-compete.”
AEG Live President/CEO Randy Phillips told Pollstar that while his company doesn’t comment on pending litigation, “We are aware and consider the claims meritless. [Michael Jackson’s] rehearsals continue unabated.”
Copies of the non-compete agreement and other documents obtained by Pollstar seem to expose a few hitches in the deal, however, that could hurt Allocco’s chances of success in court.
AllGood Entertainment pitched a private debenture offering (guaranteeing a 30 percent rate of annualized return) to investors last year in an effort to raise the $2.5 million binder payment agreed upon with Dileo Entertainment. However, the money went into an escrow account, not paid directly to Dileo or Jackson.
Allocco told Pollstar that $2 million was placed in escrow by an individual investor rather than delivered to Dileo because of three “mitigating factors.”
“We put the money into escrow and notified Dileo’s accountant, and Dileo, that we had $2 million in the account from one of our investors,” Allocco said.
“[The investor] had information AEG was going to announce the O2 shows after the Grammys. Dileo kept contending that there were going to be no O2 shows and Michael [Jackson] repeatedly said ‘I’m not going to do the shows in London.’ The second reason was Roger Friedman’s [New York Post] column that stated that Michael was gravely ill and needed a lung transplant.”
The third reason was because of a lawsuit filed Dec. 21 against Dileo’s business partner, Mike Lamicka, also a signatory to the AllGood deal and non-compete. It alleges that Lamicka took some $300,000 in binder money while misrepresenting that he was authorized to act on behalf of KISS in booking a 2007-08 “farewell” tour.
According to court documents in that case, Lamicka was found in default March 12 when he failed to respond to the suit, filed by P.M. Group and Shiloh Entertainment, dba H&H Productions.
As Pollstar went to press, Allocco said there has been no response from Dileo or AEG Live to the cease-and-desist demand, and he intended to file suit to enforce the non-compete the following Monday.
Meanwhile, Jackson rehearsals were not only in full swing, but the Los Angeles Times was invited to come watch one of MJ’s reported four-per-week, six-hour sessions.
Details of the O2 shows are at least as tightly held as nuclear launch codes, and a lot is on the line with the 50-show marathon that is scheduled to begin July 8, lawsuits or no lawsuits, for both MJ and AEG Live.
So it should come as no surprise they are pulling out all the stops. The production budget is “north of $22 million,” Phillips told the Times, and may include as many as 22 different sets.
AEG Live announced May 11 that it has hired renowned choreographer and director Kenny Ortega, of “Dirty Dancing” and “High School Musical” fame, as show director and designer.
Ortega, in a statement, called Jackson “the greatest entertainer of our generation” and said he was eager to collaborate with him again, having directed Jackson’s Dangerous and HIStory tours.
The Times reports a two-day casting call drew 700 dancers to the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live to compete for 10 slots.
And Jackson himself is reportedly working on a dance move he hopes is as iconic as his moonwalk.
“He’s working on it,” Phillips told the Times. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”