Jacko Tries to Block Doc Footage

Michael Jackson is hard at work on yet another legal thriller.

The onetime King of Pop has launched a preemptive strike against the producer of the now infamous Living with Michael Jackson. Jacko has sicced his lawyers on Britain's Granada Television, going to court in London to block the company from airing any additional footage from the interview sessions that didn't make the final cut of the controversial documentary.

The injunction request is considered a preamble to a likely lawsuit in which Jackson will battle for ownership of the Q&A's.

The singer and his company, MJJ Productions, released a statement on Monday saying they were initiating legal action, claiming celebrity interviewer Martin Bashir and Granada "breached the terms on which he was permitted to film Jackson." Jackson's camp contends Bashir showed footage of Michael's three kids without permission and misused Jackson's quotes to create a damning portrait of the music legend.

"Consistently, Michael Jackson has argued that Martin Bashir and Granada broke the agreement by which he was permitted to film Michael, concerning ownership of the filmed material and permissions relation to the inclusion of the Jackson children," the statement continued.

Jackson's camp also asserted that Granada had yet to turn over the cutting-room outtakes of the entertainer's children to a third party--as purportedly agreed upon earlier--until the current legal spat could be worked out.

According to a Granada spokesperson, Jackson's case is hardly invincible and the company planned to fight such claims "vigorously," including withholding the footage.

A London judge will decide who's bad when both sides present their arguments in a hearing Friday.

Of course, anyone who has watched the tube in the last month knows all about Jackson's off-the-wall antics--from his fondness for children to his shopping sprees to his ever-morphing face--thanks to a glut of February sweeps TV specials.

In Living with Michael Jackson, he told Bashir that he likes to share his bed with children, that he has had only two, count 'em two, plastic surgeries and fancies himself a modern-day Peter Pan.

After the special aired earlier this month to boffo ratings in Britain and then on ABC (which paid $5 million for the special), the 44-year-old pop star said he felt betrayed by Bashir and assailed Granada for editing the footage in a way that presented a "wholly distorted picture of his behavior and conduct as a father."

During the special, Bashir said he was troubled by Jackson's treatment of his own children and by his stated fascination with other kids, especially in light of accusations of child molestation leveled against the singer by a 13-year-old boy in 1993. (Jackson ended up settling and paying the boy's family $15 million to $20 million, and no charges were ever filed.)

Jackson struck back via a Fox special titled Michael Jackson, Take Two: The Interview They Wouldn't Show You. Providing his own outtakes from the Bashir interview, Jackson tried to imply that the journalist was a hypocrite by praising the Gloved One for his "wonderful" relationship with his three children.

Then, of course, there was the Dateline NBC special Michael Jackson Unmasked, which not only interviewed a plastic surgeon on the state of the pop star's disappearing nose (not good), but also the detective who headed the probe into the 1993 sexual abuse charges and talked about what police found in Jackson's bedroom.

Jackson was scheduled to complete the network rounds with a sit-down with CBS' 60 Minutes, but he nixed the interview at his Neverland Ranch at the last minute.