They want Aaliyah to get the big screen Tina Turner treatment — not a quickie TV movie.
The family of the fallen “Princess of R&B” is trying to stop Lifetime from making an Aaliyah biopic, saying the TV outfit is too small potatoes to capture “the scale and scope of her life.”
“We want a major studio release along the lines of ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It,’ the Tina Turner movie,” said Jomo Hankerson, who was Aaliyah’s cousin and president of her label, Blackground Records.
“This needs A-list actors, A-list talent that can breathe life into what we think is a phenomenal story.”
Hankerson said they’re also mad that Lifetime has not even consulted them on their biopic, which is tentatively titled “Aaliyah: Princess of R&B.”
“They have people they can talk to, people who can provide lots of color,” said Hankerson. “But if you don’t talk to us, it’s not in the story.”
So Hankerson and the rest of Aaliyah’s kin are consulting a lawyer and putting the kabosh on allowing Lifetime to use “any of the music, or any of the photographs and videos that we own.”
“They didn’t reach out,” Hankerson said of Lifetime. “I don’t know why they didn’t reach out.”
There was no immediate response from Lifetime, which specializes in celebrity biopics such as “Liz & Dick,” which was about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and “Anna Nicole,” which was about Anna Nicole Smith.
Brooklyn-born, Detroit-raised Aaliyah Dana Haughton was killed in August 2001 when her plane crashed in the Bahamas.
Just 22, she had already sold millions of albums, twice been nominated for Grammy awards, and made her movie debut in “Romeo Must Die.”
In his best-selling biography, “Aaliyah: More Than a Woman,” Chris Farley also chronicled her creepy secret marriage at age 15 to her musical mentor, R. Kelly. And Lifetime is basing their movie on Farley’s book.
“It’s not my favorite part,” Hankerson admitted. “But we have no problem with basing the movie on Chris Farley’s book.”
Nor does Hankerson object to Lifetime casting 17-year-old Disney star Zendaya Coleman to play Aaliyah.
“I don’t have a problem with her,” he said. “It’s never been about the actress. The problem that we have is that Aaliyah was an icon and she deserves an iconic tribute, not a Lifetime movie.”
The decision to cast Zendaya in that role has drawn criticism from some in the African-American community because she is half-black.
Aaliyah was African-American.
