Official: MJ biopic is coming

deadline.com/2023/01/michael-jackson-antoine-fuqua-directing-movie-biopic-michael-lionsgate-graham-king-john-logan-1235225582/

‘Emancipation’s Antoine Fuqua To Direct Michael Jackson Biopic For Lionsgate; John Logan Script & ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s Graham King Producing With Estate
By Justin Kroll, Mike Fleming Jr

January 18, 2023 10:00am

Antoine Fuqua is set to direct Michael, a Lionsgate drama telling the complex life story of the iconic singer Michael Jackson. A script is in by John Logan, and the film will be produced by Graham King, who turned the Freddie Mercury Queen story into the blockbuster Oscar Best Picture-nominated Bohemian Rhapsody. GK Films will produce alongside the co-executors of Jackson’s estate, John Branca and John McClain.

Turning Mercury’s complicated rise, fall and triumphant comeback into a film that won Best Actor for Rami Malek might have been an easier task than the moonwalking over landmines that will have to be done with Jackson’s story. Anyone who has seen the job that Fuqua did on the Will Smith-starrer Emancipation might come away believing he hit a high-water mark as a filmmaker because of his unflinching telling of an often brutal story of the escaped enslaved man Joseph.

This has long been a passion project for King and Logan, who teamed on the Oscar-nominated Martin Scorsese-directed Howard Hughes film The Aviator and his race to innovate before his mental illness and germophobic obsessions overtook him. Sources tell us that the film will undoubtedly make the most of Jackson’s musical accomplishments and re-creation of seminal career highlights beginning with the days he fronted The Jackson 5 as a child to his hitmaking work as the biggest musical star in the world as an adult. But it will also deal squarely with the pedophile accusations that dogged his later years up to his death in 2009 at age 50, from cardiac arrest caused by a cocktail of sedatives.

Things are moving fast on Michael. Fuqua is currently finishing The Equalizer 3 with Denzel Washington in Italy, and then he will turn his attention to this one. Production will begin later this year, and we’ve heard that Fuqua will draft his Emancipation and Equalizer 3 cinematographer Robert Richardson to be by his side.

The hope is that Michael will be a global juggernaut like Bohemian Rhapsody, which grossed over $900 million worldwide and created a new appetite for the music of Queen. Lionsgate has world rights here but will seek an offshore partner, and we’ve heard Sony is squarely in the mix. That studio turned into a hit the 2009 docu This is It, comprised of footage of Jackson rehearsing for a series of London concerts when he died.

Jackson’s emergence as King of Pop was filled with unprecedented achievement, including being really the first Black singer to crack the regular rotation of videos on MTV; his introduction of the moonwalk while performing “Billie Jean” on the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever TV special in 1983; the incredible production values of the videos for “Thriller,” “Billie Jean” and other songs; and setting all kinds of records for sales and accolades.

On the other side of the coin, Jackson grew up bullied by his father Joe, the domineering Jackson 5 manager who drove his kids hard as they emerged from Gary, Indiana to become pop sensations as children, anchored by Michael’s golden voice. Michael Jackson bettered his career as he grew to adulthood, but this was accompanied by odd behavior that included sleepovers of young male children at his Neverland Ranch. Long dismissed as some kind of Peter Pan syndrome, that habit took a more sinister connotation when some of the boys claimed they had been molested, with a litany of lawsuits. There was also the plastic surgery, which transformed his face dramatically. We’ve heard theories that Jackson’s motivation might have been a wish not to see a resemblance to his father when he looked in the mirror, but certainly some of this came after he suffered damage when he was set ablaze in a pyrotechnic malfunction during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984 that required reconstructive scalp surgeries and was his introduction to painkillers.

Just as the recent Whitney Houston film I Wanna Dance With Somebody and the Baz Luhrmann-directed Elvis (the latter of which leaned into the singer’s co-dependent relationship with greedy, parasitic manager Colonel Tom Parker), the drama will come from balancing the sides of Jackson’s life and please his fans, as well as standing up and not seeming like a whitewash. We’ve heard the film might start later in his life, and then look back on the upbringing that forged his incredible talent and work ethic, along with the damage it inflicted that ultimately makes Jackson a tragic musical figure.

“Antoine is a perceptive and powerful filmmaker, and we feel very fortunate that he has chosen Michael as his next project. His visionary storytelling skills and commitment to his craft will make Michael an unforgettable film,” said Joe Drake, chair of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group.

Said King: “Antoine’s films provide personal perspectives of larger-than-life characters that continuously captivate global audiences. I’m confident that Antoine will make an exceptional and compelling film that will both celebrate and give profound new insights into the life of the King of Pop.”

Fuqua, who early in his career directed videos with the likes of Prince, Lil’ Wayne, Toni Braxton and Stevie Wonder before his film breakthrough on Training Day, will get to lean back in as he created the King of Pop’s most iconic stage and performance moments.

“The first films of my career were music videos, and I still feel that combining film and music are a deep part of who I am,” said Fuqua. “For me, there is no artist with the power, the charisma, and the sheer musical genius of Michael Jackson. I was influenced to make music videos by watching his work – the first Black artist to play in heavy rotation on MTV. His music and those images are part of my worldview, and the chance to tell his story on the screen alongside his music was irresistible.”

Fuqua is repped by LBI Entertainment and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.

For me, I'm less concerned with how much I enjoy the film (really couldn't care less) and more concerned with this being a positive thing for his legacy. I can live with a crap film if it gets people back on MJs side again after LN. I'm just not convinced a motion picture is the correct medium to do that.

I will reserve judgement for now. I had worries about the MJ Musical in terms of possible general public and media backlash and while the media has been doing their usual malicious crap the public didn't care and the musical is a success, so I guess we will have to wait and see with this one as well. I know of course that the movie is a bigger platform so more malice is to be expected from the media and haters, but if it's well done it can counter that.

I think in some ways and form it will address the allegations, but if anyone expects this to be the ultimate vindication that expectation is probably misguided as a movie like this will probably only superficially touch on them. Already a 2-3 hours movie seems to short to meaningfully represent everything in MJ's life without the allegations, so I simply can't see room there for an in-depth discussion of them. That would need its own four hours documentary in itself. And I'd prefer it to be addressed in-depth in a documentary rather than a movie.

I have recently watched the Elvis movie and it was around 2 hours and 29 minutes, if I remember correctly. And even with that length it seemed rushed. I mean not that the movie itself was rushed, but the plot was running through his life rather fast paced and superficially IMO. And I don't think Elvis's life was as eventful and tumultuous as MJ's, so this will be even more of a problem with MJ. But maybe there's enough talent in the production to solve it in a good way. At the end of the day biopics, like musicals, are more entertainment than anything else. I have heard while Bohemian Rhapsody was a success, there's a lot of fiction in it. Rocketman created a whole conflict between Elton and his father that (according to family members of Elton) isn't true just to create drama and make a more interesting plot than his real life apparently has been. With MJ, the problem of course, is the opposite: too much drama in his very eventful life to fit into 2-3 hours. So some things would have to be neglected or superficially addressed. Anyway, biopics are not factual history books and shouldn't be treated as such. They are first and foremost entertainment. And I think eventually they will have to let mostly the music carry the movie.

It could be the perfect vehicle for humanizing him. I mean, we all want a quality documentary covering the allegations, ideally interviewing people who are in a position to discredit them (pipe dream I know). But even if that happened, who outside of the hardcore fanbase actually cares enough to watch it? Dressed up in the form of a musical biopic, it'll draw in the crowds, which could make it the ideal opportunity to sneak in a few nuggets which undermine the allegations. The inclusion of Evan's phone-call to Dave Schwartz for example, is a must. If I knew nothing about MJ except for the media caricature and then I heard that in a movie, it'd make me question things for certain.