00:00I'm starting with the man in the mirror and I'm asking him to describe the footage from Michael.
00:13Hey guys, it's Sean O'Connell, the managing editor at CinemaBlend, and as you can tell behind me,
00:17I am in Las Vegas for CinemaCon 2024, where all of the studios bring their presentations
00:22of upcoming films. And at Lionsgate, we learned about a huge musical biopic that's coming
00:27based on the life of Michael Jackson. It looks like it's going to follow the formula of most
00:32biopics and it comes to us from producer Graham King, who had previously worked on Bohemian
00:37Rhapsody. Of course, when you touch on Michael Jackson, one of the things I found really
00:40interesting is that Graham King admits that there's an incredible amount of material for him
00:44to discuss as part of the singer-songwriter's life. And from the footage that we got to see
00:48in Caesars as part of Michael, we do go all the way back to Michael Jackson's roots as a young
00:54kid and then him actually going out on tour to start his musical career with the Jackson 5. So
01:00we're going to be covering, like I said, an incredible amount of material in the life of
01:05arguably one of the most famous musicians on the planet. A lot of the footage that we saw focused
01:09on the time frame of Michael Jackson's life, where he's going to be played by Jafar Jackson.
01:13And it's Michael Jackson at the time of his greatest hits, Man in the Mirror, Bad, The Way
01:19You Make Me Feel. There's, again, so many hits that you need to touch on. And it seemed like
01:23the footage that we saw is going to go through a montage of it. My biggest concern is how much of
01:28the time of the film are you going to spend in each of these time periods? You could arguably do
01:35a Michael Jackson film that touches only on the 70s, only on the 80s, only on the 90s. And what
01:40Graham King said from the stage that I really want to see what Michael does is he admitted the fact
01:46that there is a lot of controversy for Michael Jackson's life offstage. So while you want to
01:50celebrate everything that he might have done as an artist on stage, how much of the film is going
01:55to get into some of the truly bizarre stories that we heard about Michael Jackson offstage?
02:00And he claimed the fact that the movie is going to get into a lot of it and kind of emphasized
02:05that this is going to have to be a long movie in order to pull that off. There was at least some
02:10part of the footage that was included that makes me believe they are going to get into some of the
02:13darker sides of Michael Jackson. We saw brief shots of him taking pills, and there's at least
02:17one sequence that shows him being rushed off to the hospital on a gurney. And we do know that
02:23there are different instances of Michael Jackson having to go to the hospital over the course of
02:27his career. So I do want to find out what they're going to dwell on, what they're going to dig into,
02:32and which parts of that aspect of his career are going to get focused on. The footage that we saw
02:38was really only from half of the shoot, because director Antoine Fuqua, who you know from Training
02:42Day and plenty of other films that he's done with Denzel Washington, is only halfway through the
02:47shoot. Michael is going to come out in 2025. It's going to be a big emphasis for Lionsgate
02:51going into next year. I think it's tantalizing to talk about doing a musical biopic about Michael
02:56Jackson. There's plenty of stuff for you to get to. The footage, again, to sort of emphasize,
03:00looked like it's following a bit of a boilerplate that comes with doing any kind of musical artist
03:06for a musical biopic. But when it's Michael Jackson, it's going to have to be something
03:10different. The footage had a ton of energy and really captured what made Michael Jackson unique
03:16and special when he was performing live. And Jafar Jackson looks like he is nailing all of the
03:21physical aspects that come with performing as Michael Jackson. The dance, the very strict
03:26choreography that comes with being part of Michael Jackson's routine, all of that is there.
03:31I'm just really curious about how much that when you get Coleman Domingo and you get Nia Long,
03:36are you going to let them explore some of the more complicated aspects of the Jackson family
03:40and of Michael Jackson's life in particular? Based on what I saw, I really do hope that they go into
03:45that route. But this should be a warts and all biopic if it's going to maybe potentially contend
03:49for awards the way that a lot of actors who go out for musical biopics do end up being a part of
03:54that conversation. Lionsgate ended their panel with Michael, so it means it's going to be a very
03:58important film for them. It even came after Ballerina, which is going to be a big film for
04:02them in 2025. So we've got Michael circled on our calendar. Being a huge Michael Jackson fan myself,
04:07I'm really curious to see how he's portrayed and whether audiences are going to respond to it. So
04:11be on the lookout for that Michael footage if and when it makes its way online. We are going to be
04:16reporting live from CinemaCon all week, so keep it right here on CinemaBlend for the latest movie
04:20news.
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