A Michael Jackson Hologram At The Billboard Music Awards

Hologram MJ

I wonder what took them so long, but after all this was highly predictable: According to Spin and the Huffington Post, a hologram of the king of pop will be used during the Billboard Music Awards. The producers had promised a ‘history-making performance’ at Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena to promote Michael Jackson’ latest release ‘Xscape’, but the use of the hologram was only confirmed on Friday.

Hologram USA Inc, and Musion Das Hologram Ltd own rights to this kind of technology (they already did Tupac at Coachella 2 years ago) but a judge decided that this new one, a planned 3-D image of Jackson, was not violating patents held by the companies. This is a bit crazy when you think about it, tech companies think they own rights of a dead pop star’s image? They were effectively trying to stop the digital performance, declaring that one of their products was used without authorization, but the judge decided it was not the case, and they lost.

Jackson estate’s attorney Michael Feder said that ‘the holographic performance had been planned for months’ and was discussed with Alki David, the owner of the technology rights. But this didn’t prevent the lawsuit. However, even after the judge’s decision, the companies don’t want to give up and are pursuing the lawsuit,… of course there is too much money involved! Beside the episode of the legal aspect of all this, it was about certain that the Jackson cow would be milked to the extreme as it is the case right now. Cirque du Soleil had actually already used a MJ hologram for the show ‘Michael Jackson ONE’ at Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino (this had escaped me) and Hologram USA already sued Cirque du Soleil and MGM Resorts int. a few weeks ago for the same reason.

In the Michael Jackson whole debacle, the attorneys are the ones who profit the most, no wonder the guy went totally crazy when he was alive, he was surrounded by the most avid vultures of showbiz, who are still eating his dead carcass. I think holograms are simply bad taste, as they are the ultimate cash cows. I don’t want to see any rock star’s holograms and certainly not Jackson’s, it’s too creepy. Actually which Michael Jackson are they going to resurrect? Because they were a lot of them over the years.