Jonathan Demme is taking over from Martin Scorsese as the director of an authorized Bob Marley documentary.
Docu is produced by the Marley family’s Tuff Gong Pictures and Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Entertainment and has a target release date of Feb. 6, 2010, the 65th anniversary of Marley's birth. Fortissimo Films is handling international sales.
Scorsese, who announced in February that the untitled pic would be the follow-up to his Rolling Stones concert pic “Shine a Light,” dropped out for scheduling reasons.
Demme has long history of music-related pics, chronicling the Talking Heads in “Stop Making Sense,” Robyn Hitchcock in “Storefront Hitchcock” and Neil Young in “Heart of Gold.” He is currently editing a new concert film, “Neil Young Trunk Show.”
“I am thrilled and humbled by this extraordinary opportunity to participate in fashioning a motion picture that can serve as a worthy vessel for the spiritual and musical brilliance of Bob Marley, who, most everybody agrees, is one of the greatest human beings of modern times,” Demme said in a statement.
Ziggy Marley, one of the film's executive producers, said: “His empathy with my father's body of work and his unique understanding of the musical documentary form makes me confident that this film will be the ultimate celebration of my fathers' life."
Jonathan Demme recently completed post-production on his upcoming Sony Pictures Classics release “Rachel Getting Married.”

Just days after informing the Weinstein Co. that music rights would not be available for the film adaptation of Rita Marley's book "No woman No Cry," the Marley family has let the world know about its longstanding policy against certain licensing. Have actor appear as Robert Nesta Marley, no music.
Their statement:   
"The family of Bob Marley have had a long-standing policy not to license his music for any film or television production whereby there is an actor portraying Bob Marley. Due to this policy, the family will not issue, and have not issued, any licenses for his music to be included in any such film. There have been several requests over the years from different companies and individuals to license Bob Marley music for different projects and all of them have been declined, including the proposed Weinstein production of Rita Marley's book 'No Woman No Cry.'"
Ziggy Marley offered his two cents: "All our efforts and support are currently directed towards the documentary that we are working on with Shangri La, directed by Martin Scorsese. We believe that this project is the best way to represent our father's life from his perspective and any other film project pertaining to our father will be empty without his music to support it."

Bob Marley ringtones are available again to Verizon Wireless users after the mobile company took exception to Chris Blackwell's statements on Thursday. Seems the company believes its contracts with Universal Music are sufficient, regardless of the opinion of the Marley estate.
Seeing as how Verizon's website is more keen on advertising the availability of Kanye West tunes than the Marley classics, it took a little digging to get to all of them. Daughter No. 2, who once had "Legend" stuck in her car CD player for three months, noticed that the service is offering far more ringtones than ringbacks and that his best-known material was not offered as a ringback. She was able to download two of her two faves, "Redemption Song" and "Trenchtown Rock."

Verizon Wireless is removing all Bob Marley music and images from its online and mobile offerings just as a lawsuit was aboiut to be filed.
The Bob Marley estate, Fifty Six Hope Road Music, had prepared a lawsuit claiming trademark infringement, based on Verizon Wireless’s failure to receive permission from the family. Verizon Wireless had sought in an endorsement in March, which the Marley family said made it onto the company's  website.
The Marleys are also upset with the Universal Music, which distributes Markey's recordings.
"As a representative of the Marley Family, I am infuriated that Verizon would  go around the estate and initiate partnership with Universal Music Group," estate consultant Chris Blackwell said. "It is disturbing that these companies refuse to give the musicians the respect they deserve. We cannot  and will not allow Bob Marley's name and likeness to be used in such a manner without the authorization of the family.
"It  is not just a legal issue but a matter of principal to protect the rights of artists and their beneficiaries.   We will act aggressively toward any such a violating acts.”