Michael Jackson Director Addresses Reshoots And Allegations Against Singer

The director of the new Michael Jackson biopic has opened up about the film’s troubled production.

Michael, which hit cinemas last week, was lambasted by critics in the lead-up to its release, many of whom were displeased that the story ended fairly early in Jackson’s life, in 1988.

As a result, many of the controversies surrounding the Billie Jean singer – most notably the allegations of child sexual abuse levelled against him in his lifetime – were not addressed in the movie.

It has since emerged that the film was originally supposed to depict scenes of Jackson’s Neverland ranch being raided by the police in light of accusations made in the early 1990s.

However, these scenes eventually had to be axed after the Jackson estate noticed a legal clause in the settlement with one accuser, forbidding his name or likeness from ever being featured in a film.

Filmmaker Antoine Fuqua was forced to bring back the cast and crew for costly reshoots, which he spoke about during a recent interview with Deadline.

The director admitted the original film went “pretty far” into Jackson’s life, up to years after the Jordan Chandler allegations in the mid-1990s that his team “couldn’t use”.

Fuqua said he and his team subsequently had to “rethink everything” after the “punch in the gut” discovery, with himself, screenwriter John Logan and producer Graham King “banging our heads around” to try and come up with a solution.

Eventually they came to the conclusion that “the movie is called Michael so you have to focus on Michael”.

“Unless you can truly take your time, let’s go back to the beginning and really show people who he was on the stage,” he continued. “He’s a superhero on the stage. Just like a human being, movies have the power of empathy to just say this is a human being. No one is perfect.

“It was important to take the audience through a process of how do you get to wherever it’s going to go in a second movie; for people to get a bigger idea of his personality and what shaped him.”

A message that flashes up at the end of Michael – which reads “his story continues” – has led many to speculate about whether a sequel could be in the cards, in which the allegations could be explored more fully.

When asked if it was the case that around “a third of footage” already recorded could go int a potential part two, Fuqua confirmed: “Absolutely.”

Reports previously claimed that around three-and-a-half hours’ worth of footage was shot for Michael, which was then reduced to the two-hour finished product.

It was also suggested by The Hollywood Reporter that the “his story continues” title card was a late addition to Michael, introduced once “the filmmakers and the studios” came to “realise how successful the movie could become”.

Fuqua said last week that moving into a Michael sequel, he’d hope to not “sensationalise anything”.

“Being a movie star, rock star, superstar like Michael, there’s enough of that already,” he said. “You don’t have to do much. But I think the key is, like, who was he as a human being?

’Stay on that path and then we’ll be OK, because that’s what it’s about. It’s a biopic, it’s about a human being, he’s a real person. So that’s the key. People have to remember that.”

Fuqua previously told The New Yorker of the Jackson allegations: “When I hear things about us – Black people in particular, especially in a certain position – there’s always pause.”

He added that “sometimes people do some nasty things for some money”, which prompted a response from Dan Reed, the director behind Leaving Neverland, a documentary focussing on the allegations made against Jackson by two accusers who knew him as boys.

Despite its critical mauling, Michael has been a huge hit at the box office, making more money in its opening weekend than any biopic before it.

It’s also seemingly gone down well with cinema-goers, with an audience score on Rotten Tomatoes of 97%, and an average Letterboxd rating of 3.6 stars of a possible five.