Michael Jackson’s 14-minute music video for “Thriller” will be getting revived in 3-D next year, now that the clip’s director, John Landis, has settled a legal dispute with the singer’s estate. Although he is still working out specifics, the filmmaker hopes to release the video – which was the most expensive clip of its time and was rated the greatest video of all time by Rolling Stone readers – on Blu-ray and even in theaters, according to the New York Daily News.
About six months before Jackson’s death in 2009, Landis filed a lawsuit accusing the singer of “fraudulent, malicious and oppressive conduct” with regard to the “Thriller” video, according to E! Online. Landis was seeking 50 percent of the net profits of the video, which, at the time, was rumored to be in the neighborhood of $1 million.
“That lawsuit went on for so many years, but we settled and they paid me finally,” Landis told the paper. “And so, actually there is something happening with ‘Thriller.’ It is going to reappear in a highly polished and three-dimensional way that is very exciting on the big screen.”
The Animal House and Blues Brothers director, whose horror flick An American Werewolf in London inspired Jackson to hire him for “Thriller,” refused to offer the paper any other details about the project. “I cannot tell you any more,” he said. “I might have to kill you.”
A source told the Daily News that Jackson had hoped to include a 3-D version of “Thriller” as part of his “This Is It” London residency. The source also suggested that the estate had been considering making a “Thriller” video game, either as “a dance experience or a zombie-style, shoot-’em-up-style movie.” After all, as Vincent Price once said, “No mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller.”
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