{"id":553163,"date":"2026-04-27T11:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/553163\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T11:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:20:08","slug":"michael-jackson-biopic-smashes-box-office-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/553163\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Jackson biopic smashes box office record"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael does not include any mention of the child sexual abuse accusations that were made against the singer.<\/p>\n

Jackson always maintained his innocence, and was found not guilty of child molestation in 2005.<\/p>\n

Filmmakers originally intended to include references to some of the allegations, but the footage was scrapped after the rediscovery of a historic non-disclosure agreement Jackson made with one of his accusers. <\/p>\n

The third act of Michael had been due to centre on accusations made by Jordan Chandler in the 1990s, but a settlement Jackson made with the boy’s family at the time included a clause that prohibited the singer’s estate ever mentioning him in any movie. <\/p>\n

The film was reworked and a series of reshoots took place after the discovery, and Michael now instead concludes in 1988, before any accusations were made.<\/p>\n

Director Antoine Fuqua told Deadline, external<\/a> over the weekend that the rediscovery of the NDA led to a “tough period” because the team had to “rethink everything”.<\/p>\n

“All movies have different challenges, but this one was unique,” he said, adding that the team got around the issue by refocusing on Jackson’s musical career.<\/p>\n

The resulting film leans heavily on recreated concert performances and examines the strained relationship with his father Joseph, played in the film by Oscar nominee Colman Domingo.<\/p>\n

The costly reshoots contributed to the film’s sizeable price tag, reported to be around $200m (\u00a3148m), making it one of the most expensive biopics of all time.<\/p>\n

Michael opened on the same weekend throughout most of the world, but it is still to launch in Japan, where the local distributor has scheduled a June release date.<\/p>\n

The film is part of a recent upward swing for cinemas, after a string of box office hits such as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary, with other major releases including The Devil Wears Prada 2 this weekend set to follow.<\/p>\n

Jackson was known for worldwide hits such as Billie Jean, Beat It, Smooth Criminal and Black or White, while 1982’s Thriller is the biggest-selling album of all time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael does not include any mention of the child sexual abuse accusations that were made against the singer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-553163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}