Lionsgate
Exclusive new quotes from the director of the 2026 Michael biopic,Antoine Fuqua, explain how he balanced the story between Michael Jackson, the man, and Michael Jackson, the legend. The late Grammy-winning singer is the focus of a new movie featuring Jackson’s real-life nephew Jaafar playing him across multiple eras of his career, with a focus on his rise to fame in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Alongside Jaafar Jackson, the film stars Nia Long (The Best Man) as Michael’s mother Katherine, Colman Domingo (Lincoln) as his father Joe, Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick) as Michael’s manager John Branca, and Laura Harrier (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as businesswoman Suzanne de Passe.
Trailers promised a thrilling look into Jackson’s life, but telling his story was always a challenge, as he still reigns as one of the most popular musicians in history and had numerous twists and turns in his personal life before his death in 2009. Honoring his legendary status while showing him as a regular person was no easy task.
Speaking exclusively with MovieWeb, Fuqua discussed the challenges of honoring Jackson’s legacy. Through it all, Fuqua’s focus was always on making the story intimate so that the highs and lows of his life reached the proper peaks and valleys:
“Michael is so epic, he’s so big, right? It’s so loud to experience Michael with a crowd, his crowd, it’d be deafening, right? But then to cut him alone with Bubbles in the room, and you see the loneliness of somebody like Michael, or when he’s talking to his mother, and you see how lonely he really was. Because how does anybody live that way and become such a superstar, right? That you’re isolated to the rest of the world, and so we were really concentrating on making it intimate, so you can feel the grandness of his life and how small his life was as well, at times.”
Michael was also a massive undertaking from a production perspective, with reports noting that the entire third act was reshot, which led to the film being delayed by an entire year. Leading up to that, the key challenge was trying to make the main character feel grounded and real, even though he was one of the biggest celebrities on the planet for decades. Putting his loneliness and isolation into the spotlight alongside the highs of his music career, the end result includes its fair share of emotional moments while delivering the spectacle and scale fans expect from such a massively popular musician.
Michael is in theaters worldwide now.
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