{"id":439588,"date":"2026-05-22T06:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/439588\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T06:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:41:10","slug":"lionsgate-openly-talking-about-a-michael-sequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/439588\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionsgate openly talking about a Michael sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any doubts about whether Lionsgate would wind up making a sequel to its Michael Jackson biopic Michael<\/a>\u00a0presumably got sewn up about a week after Antoine Fuqua\u2019s film hit theaters back in April, as it swiftly danced past a whole host of issues and criticisms about its sanitized take on Jackson\u2019s life to become 2026\u2019s second-biggest box office movie to date. Sure, the film\u2019s closing title card declaration that \u201cHis story continues\u201d could have just been left as an acknowledgement that Jackson\u2019s life story, well, continued\u2014not necessarily in ways especially fun for audiences to watch\u2014but Variety\u00a0reports today<\/a> that Lionsgate is definitely still making some very loud noises about a follow-up film.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s per top executive Adam Fogelson, who was on an earnings call on Thursday in which he made it clear that the studio is still very interested in a Michael sequel. (Even if nothing is officially on the books with Fuqua or star Jaafar Jackson just yet.) Somewhat hilariously, Fogelson seemed to go to some lengths in the call to assure investors that a movie covering the latter part of Jackson\u2019s life\u2014i.e., everything after the Bad\u00a0tour in 1988, which is where Fuqua\u2019s movie ends\u2014would still be \u201centertaining,\u201d and not just in a train wreck sense. \u201cI would say that there is a ton of incredibly entertaining Michael Jackson story, and much of the biggest and most popular parts of his music catalog that were not touched upon in the first film,\u201d Fogelson told listeners. At the same time, there\u2019s a definite suggestion that the executive is well aware that the deeper you get into Jackson\u2019s chronology, the more depressing\/allegation-filled\/baby dangling things get\u2014but, hey, that\u2019s what non-traditional chronologies are for!<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can go forwards and backwards in telling this story,\u201d Fogelson noted of the hypothetical sequel\u2019s timeline, saying that, \u201cThere are so many other events that happened, even in the time frame of the original movie, that weren\u2019t touched upon.\u201d Which is putting it mildly: Fuqua\u2019s movie went back for fairly extensive\/expensive reshoots<\/a> not long before it was originally set to land in theaters, after producers realized<\/a> that its efforts to cover some of the child molestation accusations against Jackson were in violation of a long-standing settlement his estate made with one of his accusers. Fogelson acknowledged that some of that cut footage could potentially be worked into portions of a sequel, saving costs\u2014although it\u2019s not entirely clear how, given the legal issues, or just how unvarnished his studio and Fuqua are willing to get with the darker aspects of Jackson\u2019s legacy. \u201cWe think we\u2019ve got 25 to 30 percent of a second movie already shot from the prior production activity,\u201d Fogelson said in the call, \u201cAnd so obviously that will have some [financial] benefit ultimately, but we\u2019re going to make sure we make a big and satisfying movie for a global audience once again.\u201d To be fair, movie audiences made it pretty obvious they were willing to smile a nice, success-filled story about Jackson\u2019s life, to the tune of more than $700 million; it\u2019s a much bigger question mark of how they\u2019ll respond to the rest of his story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Any doubts about whether Lionsgate would wind up making a sequel to its Michael Jackson biopic Michael\u00a0presumably got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-439588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}