BERLIN – Thousands of Michael Jackson fans descended on Berlin on Friday for the premiere of a new biopic about the \u201cKing of Pop\u201d, undeterred by child sex abuse allegations that continue to haunt the star.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael,\u201d in which the singer is portrayed by his nephew Jaafar Jackson, is expected to be one of the highest-grossing films of its kind in history.<\/p>\n
In the queue for the screening, Andy Escobar, a 31-year-old aircraft mechanic from the U.S., said his nickname at school was MJ — \u201cbecause everybody knew that I was a Michael Jackson fan\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked about the child abuse allegations, Escobar said simply: \u201cWe know that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was found not guilty,\u201d added Megane Kittler, a 31-year-old educator from France who lives in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Only around 4,000 fans will actually be able to watch the film on Friday evening, two weeks before its official release, after being allocated seats via prize draws.<\/p>\n
For the rest, there will be Michael Jackson-themed activities throughout the weekend including panel discussions with the film crew, an exhibition dedicated to the singer and themed parties.<\/p>\n
Jackson, who died aged 50 in 2009 from an overdose of propofol, faced multiple allegations of child sex abuse during his lifetime.<\/p>\n
Release pushed back<\/p>\n
Despite his 2005 acquittal in a criminal trial for child molestation, the star never managed to restore his image while alive.<\/p>\n
Other alleged victims filed civil lawsuits after his death and several proceedings are ongoing. The artist has never been convicted in a criminal or civil court.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael\u201d was originally intended to explore the impact of the allegations on the star, according to industry magazine Variety, citing unnamed sources \u201cwith knowledge of the production\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, a third of the film was cut after lawyers for the Jackson estate realised there was a clause in a settlement with one of the singer\u2019s accusers that barred any mention of him in a film, the magazine said.<\/p>\n
As a result, large parts of the film had to be rewritten and the release — originally scheduled for April 18, 2025 — was pushed back.<\/p>\n
Film studio Lionsgate is banking on making US$700 million in global box office receipts for the feature-length film.<\/p>\n
That figure would far surpass other productions in the same genre except for the Freddie Mercury-inspired \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d, which took in $910 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN – Thousands of Michael Jackson fans descended on Berlin on Friday for the premiere of a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[712,49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-596402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}