Steven Spielberg is having second thoughts about producing a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the slain peacemaker’s children won’t stop fighting. DreamWorks Studios announced Wednesday that it could renege on its plans to start filming a biopic on the civil rights leader unless Martin III, Bernice and Dexter settle their squabble over the agreement. Read more.

Rappers, songwriters and musicians will now be able to use the speeches and other writings of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in their works, thanks to a new agreement between EMI Music Publishing and Atlanta-based Intellectual Properties Management, which oversees licensing for the King Estate. The deal also covers online and digital media, according to Dylan Jones, EMI’s vice president of corporate communications. “I think that it will cross all genres and styles,” he said. Read more.

Martin Luther King III and Bernice King were ordered by a Fulton County Superior Court judge on Friday evening to turn over personal papers and letters belonging to their late mother to their younger brother, Dexter King, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville specified just how the more than 700 boxes containing Coretta Scott King’s documents should be turned over to the court in an order released late Friday evening. The children of the civil rights legend Martin Luther King, Jr., have to turn over the documents “80 boxes at a time” or else, the judge wrote. “Any party failing to adhere to any court order … may face sanctions,” he said, adding that those sanctions could include jail time, said Don Plummer, a court spokesman. The King siblings only partially followed a previous court order, Plummer said. Some boxes were produced, but many contained other belongings of Mrs. King, not just documents. Dexter King took his siblings to court get letters sent between civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife for a book he wants to publish on his mother, Coretta Scott King. He asked for the letters on behalf of King Inc., the family corporation that controls King’s intellectual property, but his brother and sister have resisted.

Fate of intimate MLK letters to be determined in court.

In the latest King family drama, a judge has ordered the daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to bring intimate correspondence between the civil rights icon and his late wife, Coretta Scott King, to a Fulton County courtroom for a hearing to determine the letters’ fate. At stake, among other things, is a $1.4 million publishing contract for the autobiography of Mrs. King, reports The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Penguin gave notice that it would terminate the book deal if it did not receive the letters by today. The Rev. Bernice King, the youngest of the King children and administrator of her mother’s estate, has refused to hand over letters and photos for an autobiography she says her mother didn’t want. Read the rest at BET.com/News.

MLK’s kids continue to battle.

The very public legal squabble among Dr. Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King’s three surviving children stands to scuttle a $1.4 million book deal. For the past several months, the King kids – Bernice and Martin Luther King III on one side and Dexter King on the other – have been battling in court over their parents’ estates. Martin and Bernice have filed lawsuits arguing that Dexter, who is president and chief executive officer of the estate, King, Inc., has mismanaged money from the estate and even tapped funding without authorization. Dexter has produced documentation he says proves that he has made no unauthorized withdrawals and that his siblings have gotten equal periodic allocations. In the latest incident, Penguin Group, the New York-based publisher, agreed to pay $1.2 million to King Inc., and another $200,000 to the Rev. Barbara Reynolds, who taped conversations with Coretta King before her death in January 2006. Now, Penguin has threatened to kill the contract and is demanding that the estate return a $300,000 advance unless it receives photos, personal writings and letters within seven business days. While Dexter signed the agreement with Penguin, the siblings are arguing over which documents and photos should go to the publisher. They also say that their mother no longer wanted to work with Reynolds, who was a longtime journalist before going into the ministry. Representatives for Dexter King say that he was well within his power to execute the contract and that he discussed the deal with his brother and sister before signing it. “He signed the contract, but that’s his job,” Craig Frankel, Dexter’s personal attorney, said. “No one questioned when they got their share of the sale from the King papers whether Dexter had the authority to sign a contract. Nobody complained when they got their millions.” But Jock Smith, an attorney for Bernice and Martin Luther King III, said they knew nothing of the book deal until they were asked to turn over the documents a few weeks ago. “This basically comes down to a situation where Dexter has done things on his own,” Smith said.