Whitney Houston died prematurely at just 48 years old in 2012 broke. Throughout her career, she was celebrated as the woman with one of the most beautiful voices in the entertainment industry. However, at the end of her life, as young as she was still, she had many problems with her husband and mainly with drugs, which affected her work and popularity, and therefore her income.
She had huge debts, although 10 years earlier she had signed the biggest contract of that time in the entertainment industry – for 100 million dollars with “Arista”, writes BTA.
In 2019, Pat Houston, who is her older brother’s wife and manager and then executor, signed with the record label Primary Wave. Then the singer’s inheritance was estimated at about 14 million dollars. The music company managed to increase it fourfold, writes “Billboard”.
New projects are now planned, from which significant profits are expected. The most significant of them is the new biographical film “I Wanna Dance with Somebody: The Whitney Houston Movie”, which was released in the USA on December 21, and in Bulgaria on December 23. It is planned as a corrective to what is known about the star, although its creators claim that not everything is agreed with the family, and some things in it may not be to their liking.
The script was written by Anthony McCarten, who created “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “The Theory of Everything”, “Darkest Hour”. The revenue is expected to be significant and it will increase interest in Whitney Houston’s songs, introduce young people to the star’s hits.
According to Anthony McCartan, the four films that came before “I Wanna Dance with Somebody: The Whitney Houston Movie” have one thing in common – “they are obsessed with her mistakes,” writes the Guardian. They reflect the prevailing opinion of people at the death of the star – since then, her name has always been associated with tragedy. “It’s a universal perception. In some ways, this film is a corrective to that,” McCarten says, adding that it was important for him to focus on the singer’s enormous achievements.
A series of products are also planned for Whitney Houston’s anniversary – a perfume that has already gone on sale, T-shirts with her photos, a doll that looks like her, a series of makeup. The tour with her hologram will also be renewed, although she caused confusion at concerts due to the bad resemblance.
In 2023, when Whitney Houston would have turned 60, an album of the singer’s gospel songs would be released and a Broadway musical based on the new film or libretto by McCarten would be staged. The plan to return Whitney Houston to the charts is led by the company “Primary Wave”. Last year, she released her cover of Stevie Wondon’s song “Higher Ground,” which was a success, and now plans to release her more obscure records.
In addition to “Primary Wave”, the profits will benefit the singer’s family – her brother Michael, who after her death admitted that he gave her the first drugs, her other brother Gary, his wife Pat, who makes the deals, her mother Sissy, with with whom she has had difficult relationships. This leaves the uneasy feeling that her relatives are profiting from her death, even though they claim they only want to protect her legacy.
Whitney Houston has always been generous to her relatives. However, they largely contribute to her accumulated debts. At her death, they were about $20 million.
Few singers can boast the impact that Whitney Houston had with her self-titled debut album in 1985. With her impressive voice, she became the first artist in history to have seven consecutive singles reach number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. . She has received six Grammy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four No. 1 albums and won 22 American Music Awards. Her 2001 contract with Arista, worth $100 million, was the largest up to that time. Her name is still synonymous with iconic vocal performances such as “I Will Always Love You” from the movie The Bodyguard. At first, she is a paragon of success for beginners, but a failed marriage, drug use, and the pressures of fame wear her down. Whitney Houston was found drowned in a bathtub in a Los Angeles hotel hours before the annual pre-Grammy Awards party hosted by her mentor Clive Davis.
