Legendary director Antoine Fuqua and the producers that brought you 'Bohemian Rhapsody' are back with another huge musical biopic, 'Michael,' a story spanning decades in the life and career of Michael Jackson. We became some of the first people in the world to see the trailer for 'Michael' at CinemaCon 2024, and there's a lot to discuss. Watch CinemaBlend's Managing Editor Sean O'Connell break it all down.
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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.