MJ $250m deal

ACTION JACKSON: It appears that selling 31 million albums in a matter of months is enough to inspire a record company to peel the big ones. John Branca, Joel Katz and John McClain have worked out a humungous distribution deal with Sony Music for as many as 10 new Michael Jackson "projects," over the next seven years, including unreleased recordings, DVDs and perhaps even videogames. Said deal could be worth as much as $250 million—the kind of money you don’t see labels tossing round these days. "We and Sony feel that the future for Michael Jackson is unlimited," said Branca in a statement. Added Columbia/Epic chief Rob Stringer: "The audio rights span across different projects. There may be theater. There may be films and movies. There may be computer games—or multimedia platforms that I don't know about today that will happen in 2015." (3/16a)