Lionsgate released a trailer for the Michael Jackson biopic Michael on Monday, answering a few questions about one of the most anticipated films of 2026, but leaving a host of others up in the air.
Announced back in 2022, the Antoine Fuqua-directed film starring Jaafar Jackson, the late star’s nephew, follows the King of Pop’s journey from obscurity to superstardom. It was originally scheduled to premiere in April 2025, before being postponed first by six months, then by a year.
According to media reports, those delays were due to reshoots. While Fuqua initially intended to include a segment detailing the sexual abuse allegations against Jackson, as reported by trade magazine Puck, they were allegedly required to drastically alter the ending due to a legal agreement between the musician’s estate and Jordan Chandler, who accused Jackson of molesting him in 1993.
Chandler later received a roughly $20 million US settlement. According to Puck, the estate ostensibly neglected to tell producers they were not legally allowed to depict Chandler or his family. Neither Fuqua, Lionsgate or Jackson’s estate have verified that this was the case.
It’s still not known if rumours about alterations to the movie’s finale are true, nor is it clear if the film will include the criminal and civil cases mounted against Jackson.
WATCH | Michael biopic trailer:
Jackson and his estate always denied the singer was guilty of any of those accusations. He was prosecuted over allegations of sexual abuse in 2005, but acquitted on all charges.
Also unknown is whether there will be a follow-up film. Rumours have swirled since the middle of last year that the movie would be split into two parts, with the first focusing on Jackson’s rise, and the second on both the stratospheric heights of his fame and his subsequently tainted public reputation.
As the Hollywood Reporter later stated, the reshoots that Michael went through were less about redoing elements, and more about turning what was originally one film into two, largely due to the above legal issue.
“While we’re not yet ready to confirm plans for a second film, I can tell you that the creative team is hard at work making sure that we’re in a position to deliver more Michael soon after we release the first film,” Lionsgate studio movie division head Adam Folgeson reportedly told analysts late last year, per the Hollywood Reporter.
Involvement of family
Also unclear is exactly how involved Jackson’s relatives were with the production.
Actor Colman Domingo, who plays Michael’s father, Joe, told People that Michael’s children, Paris and Prince Jackson, were “very much in support of our film.” He further said he’d “chatted briefly” with Paris, who had been “nothing but lovely and warm.”
But Paris Jackson later took to Instagram to reject that characterization.
“Don’t be telling people I was ‘helpful’ on the set of a movie I had zero per cent involvement in,” she wrote. “Lol that is so weird.”
In a follow-up post, she said she had read one of the first drafts, and gave notes on what was inaccurate and what “didn’t sit right” with her.
“When they didn’t address it, I moved on with my life,” she wrote, adding she had stayed silent because she believed the film would still satisfy fans who accepted the “fantasy” of her father’s life. “Not my monkeys, not my circus. God bless and God speed.”
Prickly estate involvement — and glossing over unpopular elements of artists’ lives — often come part-and-parcel with music biopics. For example, 2024’s Bob Marley: One Love received largely negative critical reviews for its saint-like depiction of its central star.
“This is a reverent Hallmark Channel-type film made with the family’s co-operation,” read a review from the Guardian.
That co-operation and input about how Marley was depicted was so extensive, Rolling Stone reported, that the family offered input on everything from the nuances of the reggae musician’s accent, to how many steps he skipped when walking up stairs.
And though it got better reviews than the Marley biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere saw similar criticisms.
“The film is initially overburdened with cliches … We’ve seen this kind of movie plenty of times before,” reads a review on RogerEbert.com, before going on to praise some later risks taken in the film.
Estates that shape the narrative
As with other musicians, Michael Jackson’s estate has attempted to exert control over how he is depicted in media.
In 2024, organizers of the MJ Live tour alleged that the estate threatened them with legal action for trademark infringement, then sent cease-and-desist letters to venues hosting the show.
And in 2019 they sued HBO for $100 million over its documentary Leaving Neverland, and sent a letter to Britain’s Channel 4 protesting their broadcast of it.
In that letter, they claimed the documentary, which featured two men who accused the singer of molesting them as children, violated programming guidelines. The Emmy-winning Leaving Neverland was eventually removed from HBO’s streaming platform.
The film’s director, Dan Reed, subsequently released a sequel to the documentary in 2025. That film, Leaving Neverland II, was largely about their legal battle with Jackson’s estate.
But when it comes to the music biopic genre, ingenuity rarely connects directly to popularity.
Regardless of its overwhelmingly dismal critical reception — based almost entirely on its refusal to plumb the depths of its star — Bob Marley: One Love became a box-office smash. And despite scattered praise for Deliver Me from Nowhere, the Springsteen bipic ended up a dismal flop.
Still, there are innovations in the genre: 2024’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown managed to pair praise for an iconoclastic format with modest box office success. And Priscilla — Sofia Coppola’s film about Elvis Presley’s former wife, made expressly against the wishes of the Presley estate — pulled in solid numbers for a relatively small-budget film.
Often, all that’s needed for a music biopic to succeed is the fame of its subject. And regardless of Michael‘s issues behind the scenes, his name alone may be enough to help the film find an audience.
Deadline has already pointed to Michael as one of the potential breakouts of 2026, while Indiewire had predicted that it will cross the billion dollar mark at the box office.
