Everlasting Films Wins Auction for Damon Dash's Life Rights With $550,000 Bid
Everlasting Films has won the auction for the life-story rights of Damon Dash, the co-founder of the hip-hop label Roc-A-Fella, with a bid of $550,000 (US dollars). The only other bidder was Doug Peters, according to a court filing dated 21 October in Dash's bankruptcy case, as Billboard reported.
Life rights are the legal permission to turn a real person's life story into a film, book or other work. Under the deal, Everlasting now holds exclusive rights to commercialise Dash's name, voice, image and likeness. The package also includes 100 hours of Dash's archival material dating back to 1990, and the rights to a Roc-A-Fella movie project he had been developing.
The sale does not include any ownership shares in Roc-A-Fella. Dash founded the label in 1994 with Jay-Z and Kareem Biggs Burke. It released Jay-Z's debut album, Reasonable Doubt, in 1996. Dash's one-third stake in the company, including royalties from that album, was auctioned in 2024 to reduce his tax debts. The New York Post reported at the time that New York State had bought the share to cover his back taxes.
The life-rights money will go toward paying Dash's debts, including unpaid taxes and a defamation judgment. Those debts are listed in a bankruptcy petition he filed last September, when he said what he owed far outweighed what he owned. According to that petition, he owed $25.3 million to creditors. The largest share, $19 million, was owed to state tax authorities in New York, New Jersey and California. He also owed $600,000 in child support, and nearly $5 million to movie producer Josh Webber over copyright infringement and defamation.
His case is a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In that type of case, a court-appointed trustee sells the debtor's assets and uses the money to pay creditors. In August, Bloomberg Law reported a $37,000 starting bid for the same life-story rights and unreleased Roc-A-Fella Movie footage. The auction that produced the $550,000 bid took place earlier this month.
Dash's dealings with his catalogue have drawn court attention before. In 2021, a Manhattan court temporarily blocked his attempt to auction a non-fungible token, a digital certificate of ownership, tied to an interest in Reasonable Doubt. The sale of his life story is the latest step in a process that has been moving through the courts for more than a year.
Behind the figures sit people who are owed money: tax agencies in three states, a family relying on child support, and a producer who holds a judgment against Dash. The payments depend on how the trustee divides the sale proceeds among them.
