Michael Jackson is moonwalking back, but after the Springsteen flop is the pop biopic still relevant? | Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson’s voodoo classic Thriller topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week of November 15, giving the 16-year-old King of Pop the record for top 10 hits across sixty different decades. Simultaneously, Jackson broke a record with 116 million views in 24 hours for the trailer of the new biographical movie Michael, which will be released in April.
Millions of fans may be excited and prepared for Jackson’s biopic. By comparison, the trailer has outpaced Taylor Swift’s Eras tour preview and will join a regiment of current music biopics on Bruce Springsteen, Amy Winehouse, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and Elton John. The most successful of them all, the Freddie Mercury and Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, grossed nearly a billion dollars at the box office.
So, are moviegoers really ready for Jackson to moonwalk back into their lives? It’s only been six years since Leaving Neverland, the Netflix documentary that examined the allegations of two men who claimed they were abused by the singer as children, and nine years after Off the Wall examined her remarkable rise as a solo artist.
Jackson, who was acquitted of all child sexual abuse charges following a 14-week criminal trial in 2005, remains a powerful force and his legacy is subject to opposing forces: one that will celebrate his musical and performing talents, the other that will notate it but warn against further celebration in light of the accusations against him. Jackson and his estate have always denied the allegations.
“I wouldn’t want to bet against people’s love for Michael Jackson,” says Dan Green, a professor of entertainment management at Carnegie Mellon University, pointing to the popular Jackson Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas and the Broadway musical MJ. “I think there will be a lot of interest around this and I expect it to do really well.”
Jackson’s biopic stars Jaafar Jackson, the singer’s nephew and Jermaine’s son; This proves that the Jackson clan’s show business is nothing more than a family business.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), the film promises to “trace the story of Michael Jackson’s life beyond music, tracing his journey from the discovery of his extraordinary talent as the leader of the Jackson Five to the visionary artist whose creative passion fueled a relentless quest to become the world’s greatest entertainer.”
Producer Graham King, who also produced Bohemian Rhapsody, said in a statement to CinemaCon last year that he would “present a film to the audience that they have not seen before. When you mention his name, everyone will have an opinion.”
The $150 million production’s release was delayed because producers were forced to reshoot the final third of the film after a legal settlement was reached with Jackson accuser Jordan Chandler, who settled the singer out of court for $23 million in 1994, rendering some of what had already been filmed unusable.
It’s unclear how far Michael went in addressing the allegations against Jackson, or how far he went in addressing the impact of those allegations — he died in 2009 from poisoning with propofol, the anesthetic he was given every night so he could sleep.
“I think we’re being asked to split into two,” Green says. “So many of us live in our own echo chambers that we’ll continue to plan for our own aspects of this. The Jackson mansion isn’t doing this because it needs a few extra dollars. It’s doing this because people still want to see it.”
Jeff Jampol, who manages former rock estates including those of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Charlie Parker and was an advisor on the Jackson estate, notes that a theatrically released biopic is “the best possible tool” for highlighting an artist’s cultural legacy, regardless of any profit or loss.
“Remember, we wear a different hat to the filmmaker. They want to spend $20 million to make $40 million. We want to leave a legacy for future generations. Even if the movie doesn’t make any money theatrically, the noise, buzz and publicity that results are well worth it,” he said.
In that sense, a real estate manager or consultant’s job is to determine what made that artist or actor popular in the culture in the first place and “put that back into the pop culture conversation in a way that’s meaningful, believable, and authentic to 11- to 30-year-olds,” Jampol says. “Then they pick it up and the legacy moves forward. Remember, Light My Fire is a brand new song for a 12-year-old kid.”
Jackson fans, he adds, “are so dedicated, so fanatical, so loyal. To this day, they still organize flash mobs. Michael’s legacy was never about being ‘cool’ per se; it was about his art and his connection to people. He was unique and wore his heart on his sleeve.”
Ultimately, Jampol says the biopic still has value when directing an artist who “has a lot of drama or accusations swirling around him.”
“So what story does the director of the Michael Jackson biopic want to tell?” he asks. “And will it include any pretense in telling this story, will it include her relationship with her father? Will it include his death or her doctor, Conrad Murray? I don’t know. We’ll find out.”
