The late singer’s daughter, Paris Jackson, condemns the “dishonest” film’s inaccuracies. But that hasn’t affected box-office tracking at all.
Photo: Lionsgate
Any King of Pop completist or glutton for punishment seeking to fact-check the megabudget Michael Jackson biopic Michael (in theaters now) will certainly have their work cut out for them. In the $200 million movie’s telling, Jackson almost single-handedly brokered peace between the Los Angeles street gangs the Crips and the Bloods (who apparently united behind his dazzling gyrations on the set of the music video for “Beat It”). The singer’s future-superstar younger sister Janet Jackson, meanwhile, was completely absent from family life in the Jackson clan’s shared Encino mansion. And while there are multiple sequences showcasing Michael (played by his real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson) frolicking with his beloved chimpanzee Bubbles, the allegations of pedophilia against MJ are never once mentioned.
Perhaps the most unexpected critic of Michael’s recounting of events is Jackson’s own daughter, Paris Jackson. On social media last year, the 28-year-old singer-songwriter-actress-model called the biographical drama “dishonest” and plagued with “inaccuracy” as well as “just full-blown lies.” “A big section of the film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in fantasy, and they’re gonna be happy with it,” Paris wrote. Moreover, in a lawsuit filed last month, she accused the executors of the Jackson estate, John Branca and John McClain, of financial mismanagement, self-dealing, and excessive fees. She put Branca — also an executive producer on Michael — on blast for hiring Miles Teller (“the sole A-list cast member in the production”) to portray a younger version of himself. “Undoubtedly, Mr. Branca considers his story to be central to the Michael Jackson story,” the complaint says. “Nonetheless, it is unclear how this peculiar and presumably costly casting decision will result in commensurate box office receipts.”
Now, with most reviews for Michael critiquing its reliance upon alternative facts — “It can’t be taken seriously”; “frustratingly shallow, inert”; “Michael isn’t a movie. It’s a filmed playlist in search of a story” — the question is this: Will Paris’s strenuous disavowal keep audiences away?
To be sure, her older brother, Prince, is an executive producer on the film; Paris’s younger brother, Bigi (formerly Blanket), has participated in its promotions; and her aunt and uncles Jermaine, LaToya, Tito, Jackie, and Marlon are all also listed as EPs. In a response to Paris’s lawsuit, the executors filed a brief dismissing her complaint for having a “complete lack of understanding how the motion picture industry works.” (“These meritless objections are a profound waste of the court’s time and, ironically, the estate’s money,” they wrote.) And according to prerelease “tracking” estimates, Michael is poised to moonwalk to the top spot of new movies in wide release over its opening weekend — projected to bring in as much as $80 million in North America and $150 million more across 82 foreign markets. That would shatter the $60.2 million opening-weekend record for a music biopic, set by the N.W.A hagiography Straight Outta Compton in 2015.
“Nothing is going to change anyone’s position on how they feel about Michael with this movie,” says a studio insider. “It’s a Michael jukebox musical! It’s nostalgia. It’s fucking porn for a certain time in people’s lives where the music was everything to them. If you are a Michael Jackson fan or if you are just kind of interested because of what [Paris is] saying — it’s only good for this movie. Every album is going to go to No. 1 on iTunes. We’re going to kick the flywheel into high gear right now.”
Such an opening would certainly counteract some of the financial bleeding attached to costly overruns caused by a major fuck-up by the Jackson estate prior to a single frame of film ever being shot. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Emancipation) and written by John Logan, Michael chronicles a span of some three decades of the Thriller singer’s career. It encompasses his rocket to stardom out of small-town Indiana in the late ’60s through to his suffering debilitating burns while filming a 1984 Pepsi commercial and subsequently battling back to health and reclaiming cultural relevancy three years later. But originally, as first reported by Puck, the movie was bookended by a 1993 investigation into statements made by Jordan Chandler — a then-13-year-old whose claims of sex abuse by Jackson led to a $23 million settlement. The film’s third act in particular reportedly featured Jackson as the “naïve victim of the money-grubbing Chandlers whose unfounded claims force Jackson to endure ridicule and persecution until he ultimately settles, his resolve and reputation forever in tatters,” Puck’s Matt Belloni wrote.
Decades prior to production, however, the Jackson estate signed a contract with Chandler expressly forbidding its executors from depicting Chandler or his family in any way in a movie. Somehow, despite the legal pedigree of Branca and McClain — Branca being the lawyer who famously convinced Jackson to purchase the so-called Beatles catalogue for $47 million — that part of the agreement was overlooked even as shooting commenced. And last year, as word of the then–$155 million Jackson biopic’s “Can’t show Jordy” dysfunction rippled across Hollywood, Fuqua, Logan, and producer Graham King (behind the Oscar-winning 2018 Freddie Mercury bio-drama Bohemian Rhapsody) were left scrambling for a work-around.
The movie’s distributor, Lionsgate, pushed off the original release date of April 2025. In June, Michael underwent 22 days of reshoots at a reported cost of $15 million — with the estate footing the bill — that scrubbed any mention of Chandler, the singer’s alleged pedophilia, and the reputational fallout. And the ending was reconfigured to focus on Jackson’s recovery from the severe scalp burns he suffered during the Pepsi pyrotechnics accident.
Even within the studio system — where biopics’ interpretations of a subject’s life are often subjective rather than a rigid scaffold for facts — Michael’s omission of the child sex-abuse allegations has raised eyebrows. “If you’re doing an actual biopic and you don’t address the central conflict in the person’s life,” our source notes, “it’s like you’re doing a biopic on Hitler and you’re skipping the years 1942 to ’46.”
Of course, Michael is hardly the first biopic to gild the historical lily or face stiff resistance from the subject’s family members. The family of Jimi Hendrix refused to participate in the making of the 2013 André 3000–starring bio-drama Jimi: All Is by My Side and went so far as to deny the filmmakers’ rights to the Seattle guitar virtuoso’s music. The Oscar-winning 2018 biopic Green Book faced significant backlash from the family of concert pianist Dr. Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali in the movie), with Shirley’s brother Maurice castigating his portrayal as a “symphony of lies.” And several members of the Gucci family expressed dismay with their representation in director Ridley Scott’s 2021 biographical drama House of Gucci: Former brand chairman Aldo Gucci lamented their portrayal as “thugs, ignorant and insensitive to the world around them.”
An Academy Award–winning filmmaker who has directed several bio-dramas scoffs at the idea that such a movie could ever confine its plotting and depictions strictly to facts. “No biopic — no documentary, for that matter — is ever entirely factual,” he says. “Because even a doc is ‘entertainment.’ Without dramatic or comedic structure, where are you but reading a CliffsNotes pamphlet?”
Although Lionsgate has signaled an intent for a Michael: Part 2 — but won’t yet commit until opening weekend tallies are in — a title card at the end of Michael promises, “His story continues.” And while the movie was never envisioned to roll out in dual installments, thanks to the messy halo of reshoots and rescheduling, the studio now has plenty of foundation for a sequel. “We absolutely have more story to tell,” Lionsgate chairman Adam Fogelson said at the film’s premiere Monday. “And if the audience reinforces that they’re ready for more, we’re prepared to give it to them sooner rather than later.”
