{"id":630406,"date":"2026-04-25T17:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/630406\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T17:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:40:09","slug":"fact-checking-the-michael-jackson-biopic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/630406\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact-Checking the Michael Jackson Biopic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe team behind the new biopic Michael<\/a> were trying to accomplish quite a few things when they began this endeavor several years back. Director Antoine Fuqua, screenwriter John Logan, and producers Graham King, John Branca, and John McClain wanted to generate truckloads of money for Lionsgate, please the Michael Jackson<\/a> estate by leaning hard on nostalgia for the singer\u2019s glory years, brush away any hint of the horrifying child abuse allegations<\/a> that plagued him later in life, and possibly set up an extended Jackson Family cinematic universe. (How long before we get Control: The Janet Jacket Story?)<\/p>\n

\n\tOne matter they seem unconcerned by is fidelity to the historical record. But to be fair, that is not the job of a biopic. As we\u2019ve pointed out in fact-check articles for movies about Queen,<\/a> Elton John,<\/a> M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce,<\/a> Amy Winehouse,<\/a> Bob Dylan,<\/a> and the Sex Pistols,<\/a> if you want to learn about musical history, read a book or watch a documentary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bruce Springsteen movie Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/a> is a rare exception, but they were able to get most everything right since it takes place in just about 12 months between 1981 and 1982. Michael begins in 1966 and warps up to 1988. That\u2019s way too much time to squeeze into a mere 140 minutes. It means major events have to be skipped completely, others have to be glossed over in seconds, and the timeline has to get very squishy.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd in keeping with the grand tradition of biopics, other things were simply made up or distorted by absurd degrees. (If one of the producers is also a character in the movie, as was the case in Michael and the Brian Wilson movie Love and Mercy, expect them to be portrayed as flawless deities.) Here\u2019s a non-exhaustive guide to the factual errors in Michael.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tRebbie Jackson Exists
When the movie begins in 1966, eldest Jackson sibling Rebbie is 16 years old, still attending high school, and still living at home. But there\u2019s no sign of her at the dinner table, in the living room while the band rehearses, or anywhere else in the tiny Jackson household. Maybe she was always visiting friends when these scenes took place, but it seems like her existence has been erased from this version of history.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tRandy Jackson Does Too
Randy Jackson, the youngest of the six Jackson brothers and second-youngest sibling, was five years old when the movie begins. He started appearing live with the Jackson 5 in 1971, essentially became the sixth member, took on a bigger role in in 1975 when the group left Motown and Jermaine quit, and even co-wrote 1979\u2019s \u201cShake Your Body (Down to the Ground).\u201d At least that\u2019s what happened in real life. In the movie, he was never born.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWherefore Art Thou, Janet?
When the movie flashes forward to 1968, Michael should have a baby sister named Janet. She\u2019s the last of the nine Jackson children, she moved to California with her family in 1970, started appearing live with them in 1974, made her TV debut the following year, began acting on Good Times in 1977, and dropped her debut album in 1982. But in the universe of Michael, middle sister La Toya is the only daughter, with not a single reference to Janet. \u201cI wish everybody was in the movie,\u201d La Toya told Variety.<\/a> \u201cShe was asked and she kindly declined so you have to respect her wishes.\u201d (Randy Jackson manages Janet these days, and they likely are in agreement on not appearing in the movie.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Jackson 5 Didn\u2019t Open For Gladys Knight and the Pips in July 1968
As the movie shows, the Jackson 5 performed at Chicago\u2019s Regal Theater on July 12, 1968. In the world of the movie, they followed Gladys Knight and the Pips. In reality, they followed Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers. Actress Liv Symone does a splendid Gladys Knight impression on \u201cI Heard It through the Grapevine,\u201d and the Jacksons would cross paths with Knight quite often in the future, just not that particular evening<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tSuzanne de Passe Wasn\u2019t at the Regal Theater Either
As Colman Domingo\u2019s Joe Jackson watches the Jackson 5 at the Regal Theater, just waiting for a tiny slip-up so he can justify a beating later, Motown\u2019s Suzanne de Passe (Laura Harrier) emerges from the wings and hands over her business card. In real life, it was headliner Bobby Taylor who alerted Motown and set up the audition. To be clear, de Passe played an enormous role in the rise of the group. She just wasn\u2019t at the Regal that night. (The Jackson 5 also briefly recorded for Steeltown Records before signing with Motown. The movie doesn\u2019t show this, but it doesn\u2019t specifically contradict it either. It\u2019s more of an omission than an inaccuracy. If we focused on omissions in Michael, this article would be as long as War and Peace.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOff the Wall Wasn\u2019t Michael\u2019s Solo Debut
When the movie flashes forward to 1977, Michael (now played by Jaafar Jackson instead of young Juliano Valdi) is eager to record solo music. He\u2019s so afraid to ask his father that he urges two record executives to put the request in. Joe agrees just as long as the sessions take place at night, so they don\u2019t interfere with Michael\u2019s work with his brothers. \u201cHe can do whatever he wants in his spare time,\u201d says Joseph, \u201cso long as he continues to work with his brothers. I own his ass from nine to five. After that, it\u2019s up to him if he wants to cut an album at midnight.\u201d\u00a0There\u2019s no mention of Michael\u2019s 1972 solo debut Got To Be There, the follow-up Ben just a few months later, 1973\u2019s Music & Me, or 1975\u2019s Forever Michael. Off the Wall was actually his fifth solo record, even if it was the first for Epic following the long run on Motown.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Jacksons Weren\u2019t a Quartet After Jermaine Left
Once Off the Wall hits and Michael becomes a genuine superstar, Joe Jackson urges the brothers to hit the road to capitalize on it. One of them asks how they\u2019ll tour without Jermaine. \u201cYour brother made his choice when we left Motown and he stayed,\u201d says Joseph. \u201cThe point is we need to capitalize on Michael\u2019s album.\u201d This makes it seem like they hadn\u2019t toured since Jermaine left in 1975, and didn\u2019t even feel it was possible. But Randy filled the hole that Jermaine left, and they performed plenty of concerts between 1976 and 1978 as a five-piece. The 1979 Destiny tour was nothing new, and it started before Off The Wall even came out. The movie presents it as their first tour in many years, and it shows them as playing as a four-piece since Randy isn\u2019t in the film.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBubbles Didn\u2019t Enter The Picture That Early
In one of the moist unintentionally hilarious moments in the movie, Michael shocks his family by adopting a CGI baby chimpanzee named Bubbles sometime around 1979.\u00a0 But Bubbles was born in 1983. (We also doubt he played Twister with Michael, but we\u2019ll let that one go.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Giraffe Came Later Too
As crazy as it sounds, Michael Jackson did have a baby giraffe living at his family compound in Encino, California, before he moved to Neverland. It caused a bit of a stir since he didn\u2019t have a permit to house an exotic animal, and he was forced to move it to a private animal shelter. But that didn\u2019t happen until 1986.<\/a> The movie shows it at the house a good six years earlier.<\/p>\n

\n\tMichael Fired Joseph Earlier Than Shown
Movie Michael finds a selfless savior when he hires John Branca (Miles Teller) as his lawyer. (By wild coincidence, Branca also produces the movie.) His first order of duty is to fire Joseph as Michael\u2019s manager via fax. The document we see is dated 1981. But Michael fired his father two years earlier, shortly after turning 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Thriller Title Track Wasn\u2019t Michael\u2019s Idea
Michael spends a lot of time on the creation of Thriller, and Jackson tacks song titles to the wall one by one as the album comes together. He keeps insisting it\u2019s missing one final song. The inspiration for \u201cThriller\u201d strikes when he\u2019s at home watching old horror movies. But Michael Jackson didn\u2019t write \u201cThriller.\u201d It\u2019s solely credited to Rod Temperton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI got to know Michael,\u201d Temperton told M in 2012,<\/a> noting that he originally called it \u201cStarlight.\u201d\u00a0\u201cHe loves movies, so I came up with the idea that I should write something really theatrical\u2026This was clearly such a production number that it had to be the title track \u2013 but there were no lyrics and \u2018Starlight\u2019 just wasn\u2019t good enough. It had to be mysterious to match Michael\u2019s evolving persona. I\u2019d go back to my hotel every night and start writing titles. One night I came up with \u2018Midnight Man.\u2019 Quincy said I was going in the right direction, but it still wasn\u2019t right. The next morning it came to me \u2013 but it was a really crap word to sing: \u2018Thriller.\u2019 It sounded terrible! However, we got Michael to spit it into the microphone a few times and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe MTV Timeline is Completely Off
Once the movie gets to the Thriller period, we never exactly know where we are in the timeline. But sometime after the \u201cThriller\u201d video is shot in October 1983, Michael visits CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff (hilariously played by Mike Myers) at his New York office. Jackson urges him to convince MTV to play his videos. \u201cMTV almost never plays Black artists,\u201d Yetnikoff\u00a0says. \u201cI don\u2019t know why. Maybe they don\u2019t want to scare the shit out of the white kids in the suburbs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is true that MTV largely played white artists in the beginning, and were allergic to anything R&B or soul, but the extent of this has become grossly exaggerated over the years. And even in their earliest days, it was common to see Eddie Grant, the Specials, Donna Summer, Musical Youth, and other Black artists in rotation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the movie, Yetnikoff phones up MTV CEO Bob Pittman and starts screaming at him. \u201cIf you don\u2019t play \u2018Billie Jean\u2019 in the next 10 minutes, I\u2019m going to pull every CBS artist from your lineup,\u201d he says. \u201cBruce Springsteen, Cheap Trick, Charlie Daniels, Billy Joel. Cyndi Lauper, Bob Dylan. You can put them all in a plastic bag, cover the plastic bag in Crisco, and then shove them up your ass.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is a story that Yetnikoff loved to tell, and some version of that possibly went down. But it didn\u2019t happen then. MTV began airing \u201cBillie Jean\u201d on March 10, 1983, They added in \u201cBeat It\u201d on March 31. By the time they shot \u201cThriller\u201d in October, Michael was the face of MTV. They didn\u2019t have to be threatened with losing their Charlie Daniels videos to play his stuff. They were counting the seconds until they could premiere \u201cThriller,\u201d and run it roughly 50,000 times.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Victory Tour Featured All Six Jackson Siblings
The final act of Michael is devoted to Joseph\u2019s desperate attempts to convince Michael to tour with his brothers after the success of Thriller. As the movie shows, Don King was a promoter and brought in Pepsi as a sponsor. Jermaine also came back for the tour. But in reality, all six siblings were on the tour. We only see five in the movie because Randy isn\u2019t part of the narrative. But the movie does end with a strong hint that a sequel is coming. That\u2019ll be tricky if they get into the Nineties, with the first sexual abuse allegation coming in 1993. If that happens, expect a much longer list of factual corrections than this one.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team behind the new biopic Michael were trying to accomplish quite a few things when they began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,19928,136],"class_list":["post-630406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-michael-jackson","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}