Ashley Hefner | Asst. Op Ed
May 1, 2014
From Marilyn Monroe to Michael Jackson, it’s been common practice in the entertainment industry to generate money from artists who have passed away.
At first we saw this trend only with musicians. Rapper Tupac Shakur was coming out with albums way after he died in 1996.
Are producers genuinely concerned with putting his art out there or are they just making money for themselves?
How could they know how he would have wanted his album? It’s great that they leave an imprint on the world which also helps the family after they’ve passed.
However it seems that production companies decide to keep celebrities who have died in the middle of shooting films because there is money to be made.
Fans want to see the last film their favorite actor is in but even casual audiences want to see the “death movie” of anyone notable.
We know this happened with Heath Ledger (well if you’re a movie addict you should) who was filming “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” before he died.
To finish this film producers recast for certain scenes so that they can portray multiple physical versions of the character within Parnassus’ Imaginarium.
They used not one but three actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell.
In the end “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” made about $61,808,75 and garnered a fair amount of press. Heath Ledger’s net worth is $16 million and all of it was left to his daughter Matilda, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Now with the latest victim of Hollywood’s greed: Brittany Murphy, known for her role in “Clueless” who died five years ago in December 2009.
Murphy’s last film she was working on titled “Something Wicked” was released April 4. This film hasn’t made much money yet.
The production was $3 million according to numbers.com with no recorded sales. Is it even worth watching because it didn’t even make it to theaters and went straight to DVD?
Was it worth finishing?
Paul walker is one of most recent celebrities who has passed during filming a movie.
He is most known for the franchise “Fast and the Furious.” which he was working on when he passed, along with a film titled “Brick Mansion”.
To fill Walker’s scenes his brothers were cast as stand-ins, despite still promoting Walker as the star.
