According to the cast list posted on the Internet Movie Database, the new Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael,” includes actors in the roles of Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger, Diana Ross and John Lennon, among other celebrities.
Seemingly conspicuously absent from that roll call: Lisa Marie Presley.
The only child of Elvis Presley, the so-called King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson, the so-called King of Pop, on May 26, 1994, in a private ceremony in the Dominican Republic.
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Their divorce, attributed to “irreconcilable differences,” was finalized some two years later, on Aug. 20, 1996, in Los Angeles.
One might expect that the much-scrutinized union of two of the most high-profile names in 20th century entertainment would be alluded to in a biographical motion picture about Michael Jackson. But “Michael” (which stars Michael’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson, as the adult singer) restricts its focus to the most successful and artistically productive of the singer’s glory days, from his childhood in the Jackson 5 in the late 1960s to the start of the “Bad” tour in 1987.
Produced with the cooperation of the Jackson estate and Jackson family, the movie concludes before the Lisa Marie marriage, the accusations of child sexual abuse, the police raid of his Neverland Ranch, and the other troubling or sensationalistic elements of the Jackson story that would emerge in the 1990s and follow the singer until his death in 2009.
According to reports, the movie originally included some of this material, but that footage was scrapped.
Perhaps “Mick Jagger” and some of those other celebrities listed on IMDb also landed on the cutting room floor; because while Larenz Tate as Motown founder Berry Gordy, Kendrick Sampson as producer/composer Quincy Jones and Liv Symone as Gladys Knight get moments to shine, most of the other IMDb-listed celebs aren’t seen onscreen and aren’t even listed in the credits of the actual movie. (The presence in the Database cast list of not just “Mick Jagger” and “Liza Minnelli” but “Andy Warhol,” “Robert Mapplethorpe,” “David Bowie” and Studio 54 owner “Steve Rubell” suggests an excised Michael-at-the-disco interlude that perhaps may surface as a Blu-ray bonus feature.)
Also not in the film: Janet Jackson.
Considering the movie’s time frame, Lisa Marie’s absence is no surprise; but a viewer might reasonably expect Janet Jackson — the youngest of the 10 Jackson siblings, and the family’s other solo superstar — to be included, alongside such brothers as Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon (played, as a kid, by young Memphis actor Jaylen Lyndon Hunter).
According to a Variety interview with the fifth of the Jackson children, La Toya Jackson (who is featured prominently in the film, and is an executive producer), Janet Jackson “kindly declined” participation in the movie, “so you have to respect her wishes.”
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Does new Michael Jackson movie include Lisa Marie Presley?
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