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In life, the singer’s image was shaken by abuse allegations. In death, he is a billion-dollar business
In December 1993, Michael Jackson’s genitals were photographed by the Santa Barbara county sheriff’s department and the Los Angeles police department (LAPD). The pop music titan had been accused of sexually abusing Jordan Chandler, a 13-year-old boy who had accompanied Jackson on his Dangerous world tour and regularly shared a bed with the singer. Chandler had made a drawing of distinctive markings and blotches on Jackson’s crotch which matched the photos, law enforcement said. “Not just the genitalia,” said deputy district attorney, Lauren Weis, in comments echoed by LAPD colleagues. “But a particular mark on the underside of his penis which the victim described.”
The incident is a well-known part of Jackson lore; in a live satellite feed broadcast shortly after, the singer branded the strip-search “the most humiliating ordeal of my life”. The following month, Jackson paid a reported $25m to settle the case out of court. Jackson and his estate have always maintained his innocence in Chandler’s claims and nearly a dozen other allegations of child molestation. “All these lies and all these people coming forward to get paid … ,” he told Diane Sawyer in a 1995 interview. “Just lies. Lies, lies, lies.”
When a Michael Jackson biopic arrives in theaters this month, it won’t address the case at all. Not the LAPD’s findings from the singer’s strip-search, or any of the child sexual abuse allegations that Jackson faced. Instead, the $155m Jackson-estate-backed Lionsgate film is billed as a tribute to “the music, the legacy, the life” of the pop titan, which traces his story from humble beginnings in Gary, Indiana, to finding early fame with the Jackson 5, before becoming a generational superstar with 1982’s Thriller, which remains the bestselling album of all time.
Critics say that the film is also a play to rehabilitate his image. Jackson was acquitted of all child molestation charges in 2005, after a 14-week criminal trial, but multiple allegations have surfaced since his death in 2009. The 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland focused on two men who claimed Jackson abused them as children, and this February, four siblings from the Cascio family filed a lawsuit alleging they were sexually assaulted and trafficked by Jackson in over a decade of abuse. Jackson’s lawyers and estate forcefully deny the new claims. “This lawsuit is a desperate money grab,” Martin Singer, an attorney for Jackson’s estate, said in a statement. “This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies.”
While Jackson’s streams and radio airplay briefly dipped after Leaving Neverland’s release, his legacy has never been bigger, with multiple musicals celebrating the singer on Broadway and in the West End, as well as a Cirque Du Soleil show centering on his music. When the trailer for Michael was released in November, it racked up 116.2m views in its first 24 hours to become the most-watched music biopic trailer of all time, and some prognosticators said that it could be the first film in the genre to cross $1bn worldwide.
If it reaches that high-water mark, it will be a shocking turnaround for a production that has often seemed beleaguered, if not cursed. This month, Variety and the New York Times reported that the film was originally supposed to cover Chandler’s molestation claims against Jackson, with most of its third act dedicated to the allegations and their impact on the singer. Those reports are true, Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed told the Guardian – he read a leaked script in late 2023. “I was astonished that the estate had the confidence to directly try and address the child sexual abuse allegations,” he said.
Reed claimed that there were “a number of outright distortions” in the script when it came to telling Jordan’s story. He believed that the production was trying to show a more sympathetic side to Jackson in an effort to protect his reputation. (Chandler’s case did not go to trial and was not substantiated in court.) Reed said he was especially shocked at how the film treated the findings of Jackson’s notorious strip-search. “It was stated that the photograph and the drawing did not match,” Reed said. “That’s not the case. It was rewriting history.”
The finished Michael biopic ends in 1984, years before the singer met Chandler, Jackson’s estate said. After principal photography wrapped in 2024, a Jackson estate attorney realised that there was a clause in Jackson’s 1994 settlement with Chandler that prohibited the mention of him in any movie. “Substantial footage” was scrapped, a Lionsgate spokesperson told the New York Times, and the estate stumped up the $10m-15m needed to reshoot the film’s ending. Michael, originally scheduled for a spring 2025 release, was delayed until that October and then pushed again to a new release date of 24 April. The film faces a monumental task: to answer Jackson’s critics while also doing honest justice to the man behind the myth.
In an email, Singer, Jackson’s estate lawyer, wrote: “False or misleading claims about how an early script allegedly portrayed the discredited allegations made against Michael almost a decade later are both inaccurate and irrelevant to the film since the movie ends at a time period when no such claims had even been made.
“The bottom line is that discussion of earlier versions of the biopic’s script is entirely irrelevant to Michael – the motion picture that was actually produced and is being released globally next week.”
Lionsgate films did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
If anyone’s life story deserves an honest biopic, it’s Jackson’s; he rose from an abusive childhood to change the face of music with epoch-defining albums and superhuman live performances. While his behavior became increasingly strange and allegedly criminal in later decades, in death he has maintained arguably the biggest – and certainly the most vocal – fanbase of any deceased celebrity. After Mac Miller, he is the most-followed deceased person on Instagram.
Initially, it seemed possible that Michael would embrace a rounded picture of Jackson’s life. “He was a great artist. He was human,” Antoine Fuqua, the director, said on Good Morning America in 2023: “We’re going to show the good, bad and the ugly … We just going to tell the facts.” The following year, producer Graham King told Variety of his aim to “humanize but not sanitize and present the most compelling, unbiased story I can capture in a single feature film and let the audience decide how they feel after watching it”.
With a starry cast that included Jaafar Jackson in the lead role, as well as Colman Domingo, Nia Long and Miles Teller, shooting on Michael began in January 2024 under the code name “Maven”, after delays from the 2023 Sag-Aftra strike. As principal photography began, the cast faced questions about the allegations against Jackson. “Before I choose any role, I consider everything about it,” Teller said in a 2024 interview. “Regardless of what you know or what your opinion may be, Michael is one of the greatest to ever do it, if not the greatest.”
Domingo said that Michael would provide a nuanced portrait of Jackson. “I actually don’t think it’s trying to prove his innocence,” he told GQ. “I think it’s actually just trying to give a great examination of an artist, what made the artist who he is, what makes him complicated, for you to leave with your own answers.” In 2024, a spokesperson for the film played down the Jackson estate’s involvement in the biopic, saying they “put their trust in Graham King, stepping out of the creative process”.
Current reports paint a different picture, claiming that John Branca, the co-executor of Jackson’s estate, was involved in production decisions. In a 2025 Financial Times profile, Branca said that he took pains to ensure that the Michael team were on board with the unsullied version of Jackson that the estate wants the world to see. “After Leaving Neverland, I sensed a wavering force [among the first people attached to the movie],” he said. “And unless you understand that Michael’s innocent, we can’t have you.”
When approached for comment, Branca responded through Singer, saying that the Guardian’s inquiries were “largely premised on a false or highly misleading understanding of the actual history and evolution of the biopic’s script and production. Because of that, no response to … specific inquiries is necessary or appropriate.”
Jackson’s son Prince served as an executive producer on the film. According to a source close to the production, “family members and other friends of Michael” would often drop by the set, and Jermaine Jackson, Jackson’s brother, was often around to offer input. “I would see Fuqua walk over to him, or they would walk over to each other and exchange words,” said a source, who claims that the director took Jermaine’s feedback on board. “What I really saw him trying to do was to give the Jackson family as much onus [as he could].”
At least, some of the Jackson family. At the Michael premiere in Berlin this month, most of the Jackson clan showed out in full force to support the film: Jackson’s brothers Jackie, Jermaine and Marlon, as well as Jackson’s sons, Prince and Bigi (formerly known as Blanket). Janet and Paris Jackson were not in attendance. Last year, Paris criticized the Michael film as a “sugar-coated” biopic containing a number of “full-blown lies” about her father, while a report broke last month that Janet Jackson had an intensely negative reaction at an early screening of the movie. (Janet is not a character in the film, sources say. Paris and Janet Jackson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Domingo was also absent at the Berlin premiere. As the only true A-lister among the cast, the Oscar-nominated Domingo gives Michael a sheen of credibility: you’d think that the production would bend over backwards to get him there. But the actor was tied up with rehearsals for a Saturday Night Live hosting gig, during which he strangely made no mention of the biopic that he was seemingly there to promote. And on Hot Ones the previous month, Domingo extensively discussed his roles in Fear the Walking Dead and Sing Sing – as well as his time as a circus aerialist – but only mentioned the Michael film in a brief plug for its release date.
Domingo had been the production’s most-outspoken cast member. Now it seemed as if he was cautious of saying too much. In September, Domingo said that Paris Jackson was “very much in support of our film”, prompting an indignant response from Jackson’s daughter. “Don’t be telling people I was ‘helpful’ on the set of a movie I had zero percent involvement in … that is so weird,” she wrote on Instagram. “I read one of the first drafts of the script and gave my notes about what was dishonest/didn’t sit right with me and when they didn’t address it I moved on with my life.”
When Michael Jackson died in 2009, he was half a billion dollars in debt. In death, he is something like a golden goose that keeps laying 24k eggs. Michael, the film, is part of a years-long mission by the Jackson estate to turn Jackson Inc into a billion-dollar company. After the success of Thriller Live, which ran in the West End for 11 years, the Jackson estate doubled down with the wildly successful MJ the Musical, which has grossed more than $300m worldwide with Broadway and touring productions. Despite hitting a PR road bump when the show’s writer, Lynn Nottage, said she “didn’t know” whether Jackson was a pedophile, the production effectively glossed over controversy, going so far as to ban one reporter for asking “difficult questions” about Jackson’s child molestation charges on opening night.
Another Jackson tribute, Can You Feel It, opens in London’s West End this May. After a $600m sale of half of Jackson’s masters to Sony in 2024, Forbes put the estate’s value at $3.5bn last year. “They’ve built up, from a position of debt, a vast amount of capital within the business,” Reed said. “And they’ve done that brilliantly. Part of that, obviously, has been safeguarding his reputation.” (Reed’s Leaving Neverland was removed from HBO Max in 2024 after a settlement with the Jackson estate.)
When he was questioned about sleepovers at his Neverland ranch in a 2003 Martin Bashir documentary, Jackson called sharing your bed “the most loving thing to do”. The hallway to the singer’s bedroom was fitted out with a hi-tech security system and an alarm that would sound if anyone approached. Jackson’s bedroom also housed the singer’s collection of erotic photos, which forensic experts found to have the fingerprints of boys who had slept over.
“The narrative that Jackson and his publicist always tried to create was that he sought the company of children because he felt lonely and misunderstood in the world of adults,” Reed said. “And fine, you can be a child at heart, but you don’t need to drag them into your bedroom, lock the door and spend the night with them with very little clothing on.”
“Michael Jackson was acquitted by a unanimous jury of 12,” said Singer, Jackson’s estate lawyer, referencing the musician’s 2005 criminal trial for child molestation. “The estate firmly and unequivocally believes in Michael Jackson’s innocence, just as a unanimous jury did, the only time this issue was presented in court.”
In the wake of news of the Cascio lawsuit this February, Lionsgate has doubled down on their Michael marketing assault, which includes expensive novelty billboards, flashmobs on the streets of New York and LA, as well as a pop-up gallery. Cast members Jaafar Jackson, Domingo, Long and Fuqua have appeared on the covers of magazines for glossy photoshoots, with upbeat interviews focusing on Jackson’s genius and Jaafar’s intense preparations for the role.
A recent Hypebeast digital cover featuring a joint Q&A between Fuqua and Jaafar felt particularly stage managed; the feature was billed as “presented by Lionsgate” (magazine speak for “the studio paid for this”). Meanwhile, an Essence digital cover does mention Jackson’s alleged abuse in passing, but shies away from asking thorny questions to the cast. “The goal for us, for me, was to honor Michael in a way that would make the fans excited,” Long said. At time of publication, neither Fuqua nor the cast have been interviewed by a mainstream news outlet, and the film has only screened for long-lead publications.
Meanwhile, Lionsgate is controlling the narrative by flooding social media with praise from fawning fans who have been allowed to see the movie. “MASTERPIECE,” reads one tweet that the studio reposted on their Instagram account. “It’s perfect,” says another. Footage from a fan screening in Brazil showed an audience moved to tears. Lionsgate flew a dozen influencers out to Michael’s Berlin premiere, who posed on the red carpet and gushed about the film in social media posts. “I could have had another two hours [of the movie] easily,” said Loren Sharice, a social creator and one time American Idol finalist. “Actually, I want a director’s cut with everything they cut out of that movie.”
“The estate will do anything possible to keep the massive cashflow to the estate and its trustees going,” says Howard King, the attorney representing the Cascico siblings who are suing the Jackson estate for child sex trafficking. “I don’t know anything about the biopic other than it’s somewhat of a puff piece: a Melania-like production to glorify Michael Jackson.”
Music biopics have been a Hollywood fixture since the 40s, but have exploded in popularity in recent years. When Billboard tallied the highest-grossing music biopics of all time this January, the entire Top 10 was made up of post-2000 movies with total grosses of over $2.4bn. Despite mixed critical receptions, estate-approved biopics like Bob Marley: One Love and Bohemian Rhapsody have been staggeringly popular, with $900m box office takings and four Oscars for the latter. In recent years, it has seemed like no pop legend is safe from a stage-managed biopic that papers over the knottier parts of their story. Sam Taylor Wood’s Back To Black portrayed Amy Winehouse as a broken bird and reimagined her villainous father as a saintly figure, while 2024’s estate-managed Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody felt like a disposable cash-in, with none of the raw insight of the 2017 documentary Can I Be Me.
Meanwhile, productions that aim to take a clear-eyed approach to pop icons can seem doomed. The Oscar-winning film-maker Ezra Edelman spent five years making a nine-hour documentary about Prince for Netflix, which the streamer killed indefinitely after the Prince estate learned it would accuse the singer of physical and emotional abuse. ‘This is a gift – a nine-hour treatment about an artist that was, by the way, fucking brilliant,” Edelman said. “Everything about who you believe he is is in this movie. You get to bathe in his genius. And yet you also have to confront his humanity.”
In a recent interview, director Fuqua described his aim for Michael to show the “human being” behind the “superhero”. As the film’s release date approaches, audiences will be able to see for themselves just how far Michael is willing to go. A source close to the production said that the attitude while filming was a little different. “What everybody was saying when we were on set is, ‘This is to highlight the life of Michael Jackson and all the positive things he did,’” the source said.
“The film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in a fantasy, and they’re going to be happy with it,” Paris Jackson said. “The thing about these biopics is it’s Hollywood. It’s fantasy land – it’s not real. But it’s sold to you as real … the narrative is being controlled, and there’s a lot of inaccuracy, and there’s a lot of just full-blown lies.”
That “fantasy” may still prove irresistible to audiences. Michael is on track to open with close to $200m according to some estimates, and Lionsgate is already hatching plans for a sequel. “It kind of fills me with horror, the degree to which everyone can turn a blind eye to the fact that this guy was a bit of a monster,” Reed said. “So many people join in the cover-up. There’s this bubble in Hollywood which is like: ‘Dude, are you insane? What are you doing, trying to impugn Michael Jackson. It’s Michael fucking Jackson. Do you know how much money that’s worth?’”
