Photo Credit: Leaving Neverland / HBO
After a record-breaking opening weekend, Michael remains divisive for its portrayal of the musician’s life, despite only covering his early career.
Everyone’s talking about Antoine Fuqua’s Michael, a record-setting romp through the early career of Michael Jackson up until the late ‘80s, just before the height of his fame. But critics note the elephant in the room—that the film ends before the child sexual abuse allegations that plagued Jackson’s later life began. And few are more put off by this than Dan Reed, the documentary filmmaker behind 2019’s Leaving Neverland, a four-hour HBO documentary that detailed two accounts of allegations against Jackson.
“How can you tell an authentic story about Michael Jackson without ever mentioning the fact that he was seriously accused of being a child molester?” Reed told The Hollywood Reporter. “I just don’t really see it.”
Seven years after Leaving Neverland, Michael Jackson’s streaming numbers are on the rise as Lionsgate’s Michael hits the ground running as a box-office smash. Leaving Neverland isn’t even available on HBO anymore, following a legal settlement with the Jackson estate. Essentially, his image has been properly sanitized over the last few years to undo any lasting damage to Jackson’s image that the HBO documentary may have done.
Of Michael, Critics say the film is too sanitized, ending just a few years before the first child sexual abuse allegations tarnished the superstar’s legacy—but the film originally included some of these, and required a reshoot to omit them per a legal agreement with an alleged victim. Nevertheless, with the backing of the estate, and Michael himself played by his real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, it’s apparent that Michael is a film about celebrating the artist’s impact on music.
“It says that people don’t care that he was [allegedly] a child molester,” said Reed of the film’s success, as well as that of the MJ Broadway musical. “Literally, people just don’t care.”
“I think a lot of people just love his music and turn a deaf ear. And short of having actual video evidence of Michael Jackson engaged in [child sexual abuse], I don’t know what would be sufficient to change these people’s minds,” Reed lamented.
“I’m not trying to stop anyone from consuming his music,” he stressed. “I’ve never advocated canceling Michael Jackson. Book burning is for the Middle Ages.”
“A lot of people, I think, will kind of swallow any misgivings they may have and just sort of say, ‘Oh well, it’s a great jukebox movie,’ and just completely ignore the fact that this guy was worse than Jeffrey Epstein,” Reed concluded. “I think Jackson was genuinely a very nasty man and hurt a lot of children. And he may have been a great entertainer, but those two things don’t cancel each other out.”
Meanwhile, those involved in the making of the Michael film have expressed interest in a potential sequel, since any mention of the allegations against Jackson was removed from the finished product.
It’s still up in the air, but director Antoine Fuqua has confirmed that such a film would not shy away from the controversies that swirled around Jackson. Had it not been for a legal agreement between the estate and an alleged victim, Michael would have included a very different ending.
“I shot him being stripped naked, treated like an animal, a monster,” Fuqua told The New Yorker of shooting a scene when Neverland Ranch was raided by police, which was removed when the film was reconfigured.
“We absolutely have more story to tell,” said Lionsgate’s Adam Fogelson. “We have prepared for that moment. And if the audience reinforces that they’re ready for more, we’re prepared to give it to them sooner rather than later.”
