Given how unpopular these recent Lifetime biopics have been, you have to wonder why they keep making them. They routinely get slammed in reviews, enrage the families of the people they depict, and embarrass the actors and the network generally. I guess they must get enough viewers to make it worth advertising during them, and actually I think they are going to start getting, if they already don’t, viewers to watch the spectacle of how bad these movies are, but is it really worth the barrage of negative press they generate?
That Lifetime makes these is really quite exploitative, especially in the case of Whitney Houston, because her death is very fresh in everyones memory. This was also the case with the Brittany Murphy Story, and yes, they really made that. I was surprised when they made the Aaliya movie, because when they did her death was not all that recent.
What bothers me most about them is that they make these movies without the consent or even input from people who really knew these stars. If they did, their families probably wouldn’t always be so enraged by them. Then again, if the families were more involved, they probably wouldn’t have Lifetime at the top of their desired producers list.
Of course, I don’t expect these types of movies to stop. I’m sure that each year there will be another, and another, and plenty of negative reviews to go along with them. At the very least, like I said before, people can be entertained by how bad the films are, even if it is not so nice that Lifetime is making money by exploiting the death of recently deceased famous people.