Singer Bobby Brown says it’s his prerogative to put the brakes on an upcoming TV biopic of his ill-fated daughter’s death that falsely portrays him as a neglectful, abusive dad.
The singer, whose daughter with Whitney Houston met a tragic end after she was found unconscious in her Georgia bathtub, wants a federal judge to stop the film, “Bobbi Kristina,” from airing.
The project, set to hit TV One next month, includes scenes of Brown being “violate [sic] towards Houston,” and suggests Brown “does not love his daughter [and is not] committed to his daughter,” Bobby claims in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit.
The “defamatory and untrue” film tries to profit off Brown’s pain, insists the “My Prerogative” singer, who denies being abusive to his family.
Brown is played in his daughter’s biopic by Hassan Jonson as a “hard drug user” who neglects his fatherly duties after Houston’s 2012 death, in which she was also found unconscious in a bathtub.
Producers Tracey Baker-Simmons and Wanda Shelley unfairly took advantage of their previous work with Brown to make the movie, he charges.
The pair used information from a 2004 Bravo TV reality show, “Being Bobby Brown,” without the crooner’s permission, he alleges in court papers.
Brown is also seeking $1 million damages from the biopic’s production companies, TV One LLC, Simmons Shelley entertainment, and their affiliates. Baker-Simmons and Shelley couldn’t be reached.
TV One isn’t backing down. They “stand by the film and its representation of this period in Bobbi Kristina’s life,” the production company said in a statement and producers have already started promoting the film. A promo photo included in the lawsuit shows actors depicting a gap-toothed Brown, with a young Bobbi Kristina and 90s-era Whitney, sporting a white visor and million-watt smile.
