Michael has proven to be a huge success, so the sequel to the biopic about Michael Jackson has been approved by Lionsgate, with the new filming scheduled roughly between the end of the year and the start of 2027. Jaafar Jackson, the singer’s nephew and a breakout star of Antoine Fuqua’s film, explained to GQ Middle East what we should expect from Michael 2, which will continue to tell the King of Pop after the performance of “Bad“, the effective closing of the first chapter. The time will come to face the flood of accusations of sexual abuse of minors. And for Jaafar there is only one way to address it.
Jaafar Jackson pushes for Michael’s point of view on the abuse issue
We know that Michael in Antoine Fuqua’s film was meant to last three hours, not the two we saw in theaters a few months ago: due to legal issues, around which there was some confusion during the film’s preparation, it was not possible to include what related to the accusations of sexual abuse of minors, dating back to 1993, the thorn in Michael Jackson‘s image. Lionsgate and the writers have never ruled out using in the sequel the material that was necessarily cut, but in the meantime it’s Jaafar Jackson who explains how the matter will be addressed, with words we can imagine will spark debate among those who never believed in the star’s innocence: “I believe that the second film will show us even more his perspective, because at the end of the story those accusations came from someone else, they are someone else’s story. It is someone else’s idea, mainly dictated by an agenda. And it has always been the problem we’ve faced as a family: not being able to make Michael’s voice heard. I think it was very, very important, especially in recent years. […] The first film focused on Michael’s roots, to give you an idea of who he was before the success and becoming the icon that everyone knows, to help you understand what kind of human being he was. […] His purity never changed, that ongoing willingness to find the good in other people. No matter what happened, how he was treated, what they said about him, he never stopped treating people with kindness. […] I hope that this will come out in the second film.”
According to Variety and Deadline, Michael cost between $150 million and $200 million, and has grossed over $1 billion worldwide. In Italy it ranks fifth among the year’s best results, with €25,784,000 (source: Cinetel).
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