A new blockbuster film about the controversial singer could make $1bn worldwide. Owen Myers and Lanre Bakare explain what it says about Jackson’s legacy
If it’s a big year for Michael Jackson fans, it’s a mammoth one for his estate. This canny operation has turned the $500m debt owed by Jackson when he was alive into a business generating hundreds of millions of dollars following his death in 2009.
There has been a jukebox musical and a Cirque du Soleil extravaganza – not to mention dozens of themed events, shows and bottomless brunches memorialising him as “the greatest star ever to be born”.
Now, a biopic is expected to make a record-breaking $1bn worldwide. But the movie, like the musical before it, does not delve into the devastating allegations of child sexual abuse made against Jackson over decades. That drip-feed of stories changed the way he was seen forever. But not for everyone.
Owen Myers, the deputy arts editor for Guardian US, tells Nosheen Iqbal about the biopic’s troubled history and why it is being made now. Plus, Lanre Bakare, the Guardian’s arts and culture correspondent, explains Jackson’s enduring popularity – and why so many fans choose to ignore the allegations made against the singer.
