The Daily - The Resurrection of Michael Jackson

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

The new biopic about Michael Jackson has been a record-shattering box office success. The subsequent outpouring of love for the musician was the result of a painstaking, yearslong effort to resurrect the reputation of the king of pop, despite the accusations of sexual abuse that have surrounded him for decades. Mark Binelli, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, discusses the new playbook for rewriting the past. Guest: Mark Binelli, a writer for The New York Times Magazine. Background reading:  The rise and fall and rise of Michael Jackson. Photo: Lionsgate For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Okay, we have got to talk about this Michael Jackson movie. From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro. This is The Daily. Oh, my God, that was like the greatest fucking movie I have ever seen. Oh, my God, like, I love this man. The obsession I have right now with Michael Jackson is just so unreal. The record-shattering box office success of Michael, the new biopic about Michael Jackson.

I have not stopped thinking about it, like, Every time I talk to my friends, I'm like, dang, I can't wait to get off the phone with y'all so I can listen to Michael Jackson. He was so majestic and just like a beautiful human being. I'm genuinely appreciating Michael Jackson as a whole more than I thought I ever would. And the outpouring of love for the late musician that the movie has unleashed was no accident. Instead, it was the culmination of a painstaking, years-long effort to resurrect the reputation. and profitability of the king of pop, despite the multiple accusations of sexual abuse

that have surrounded him for decades. Today, Times magazine writer Mark Bonelli takes us inside the new playbook for rewriting the past. It's Friday, May 8th. Mark, welcome to The Daily. Thanks for having me. You are not a movie critic. No.

And we're not really here to talk about the artistic merits of this movie about Michael Jackson. Although just to say, critics have been pretty unkind to the movie overall, which has done nothing to dampen ticket sales. Your reporting has been focused on how the movie came to be and how it fits into a much larger project of Michael Jackson's. and image repair. Is that the way to think about it? Definitely, yeah. It's really a fairly remarkable business story, and it was orchestrated by the people now running his estate. And their project, as you said, has been to rehabilitate Michael Jackson, who'd become a fairly toxic asset and restore his life and music as exploitable intellectual property. And this biopic, Michael, is the culmination of that years-long effort,

and it's been an undeniable success, I would say. And where in your mind does the story, the project of image rehabilitation, this business success story, begin? So it really begins right after his death. Tonight came the word from L.A., Michael Jackson, the king of popas, he was called, has died. In 2009.

A child star at first, who as an adult was a deeply troubled man. And to understand just how. massive a project the state was facing at that point, you have to remember that Michael Jackson's reputation when he died really could not have been worse. His recent life was tarnished by allegations of child abuse by addictions to prescription drugs and plastic surgery. He had been accused multiple times over many years of child sexual abuse. Michael Jackson, the biggest superstar in the world, allegations that he sexually molested

young boys. Those accusations were very public. Allegations of child abuse have prompted a Los Angeles police investigation of pop star Michael Jackson. The Los Angeles Police Department initiated a criminal investigation. The first instance was a child named Jordy Chandler. This was in 1993. The resolution of this case is in no way an admission of guilt by Michael Jackson. That case ended with a multimillion dollar settlement with Chandler and his,

family. I am not guilty of these allegations, but if I am guilty of anything, it is of giving all that I have to give to help children all over the world. He very much denied any wrongdoing, always did. Then in 2005, Michael Jackson came face to face with his accuser for the first time in court on Wednesday. A second accuser, a boy named Gavin Arvizo, Blake Chandler accused him of sexual abuse. that case went to trial.

If convicted on all 10 counts, which ranged from child molesting to giving alcohol to a minor, he would face more than 20 years behind bars. And Jackson was fully acquitted, and he's always denied those allegations. But he had a habit of making everything worse for himself. Is it really appropriate for a 44-year-old man?

Most infamously, he sat down with Martin Bashir, a British journalist. To share a bedroom with a child who is not related to him at all. That's a beautiful thing. Where he openly acknowledged sharing bedrooms with children. That's not a worrying thing. Why should they be worrying? Who's the criminal?

Who's Jack the Ripper in the room? This is a guy trying to help heal a child. And defended himself. Why can't you share your bed? The most loving thing they do is to share your bed with someone. At the same time, Jackson is in a huge financial hole. He's deeply in debt. For decades, he continued to spend as if he were the reigning pop star on the planet, even when his reputation got worse and worse, and he was no longer touring. And when he dies, he's close to $500 million in debt. Wow. And I was able to get a very close look at how this happened in the state of his affairs by a ruling in a tax trial that took place after. after he died between the estate and the IRS,

the government arguing that the estate owed hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes based on the value of his name and likeness at the time of his death. And the estate found itself in this sort of perverse position of arguing that no his name and likeness and future earning potential were close to nil because his reputation was so irredeemably degraded. Literally nil, nothing. Pretty much. I mean, you have to remember that the estate,

is arguing in this case specifically to get the tax burden as low as possible. So they're making a very extreme argument. And if you read through the judge's ruling, it's really a fascinating document. I mean, the first six months of 2009, he died that summer. The judge found Jackson had only made $24. Wow. That's $2.4 off of his name and likeness. At the time he was preparing to, you know, return to live performance. He'd booked a series of dates. in London at the O2 Arena, 50 dates, which had sold out nearly instantly. They couldn't find a sponsor,

a corporate sponsor for the shows. The merch company that they contracted with to make T-shirts and the products, they refused to make any of the products until the shows actually started because they were worried that Jackson wouldn't go through with it. A Q score is a measurement

of a brand or a celebrity's consumer appeal, basically. Right, and they're kind of reputational value to the market. Yeah, by the end of his life, Jackson's had dropped to zero. So that tells you something. It's genuinely hard to fathom that there could ever be a moment when Michael Jackson, looming as large as he does, could have a brand that was essentially worthless. Yeah, and we're talking about his personal reputation.

The songs are something else, you know, there was always going to be a potential value there because they're just such a huge part of our culture. And so the ultimate project moving beyond the songs would be to rehabilitate the man in some way and stop that reputational bleeding into the rest of his IP, for lack of a better word. So legal documents describe this really remarkable scene in the hospital where Jackson is pronounced dead and his family is surrounding his bed, mourning him. And meanwhile, a group of advisors have come. commandeered a room nearby, and they've turned it into a war room, essentially. Their immediate task at hand is to figure out how to deal with this massive amount of debt and basically stave off bankruptcy.

And so the guy who ends up leading this process is a man named John Branca. He was Jackson's lawyer throughout most of the 80s through sort of peak Jackson era. And he'd just come back onto the scene literally eight days before Jackson died. and it turned out that Jackson's will had named Branca and a longtime family friend named John McLean is co-executors. So now suddenly, Branca was running the estate, essentially. And what ends up being Branca's plan? What is his idea for how to take this reputation that's in tatters

and this debt that is mounting and somehow turn it around? Well, the first order of businesses to start generating any income. The London shows obviously had been part of that plan before he died. That's off the table with Jackson gone. But there was rehearsal footage of him preparing for the shows. And so they decided to cut it together into a concert film. The film was called This Is It. It premiered in theaters just a few months after his death.

This is the moment. This is it. And the movie was a huge hit, grossing somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 million, making it, you know, one of the, if not the most successful concert films ever. Wow. Hold for applause fade out. And as Billboard magazine pointed out shortly after that, it became pretty clear that Jackson was worth more dead than alive. Hmm. Explain that.

Well, you know, the living Michael Jackson had... this habit of doing things that reminded people of everything that made them feel somewhat queasy about him. So with him gone, it's a morbid thing to say, but there was no one around anymore to give problematic interviews or to dangle babies over balconies or do anything that could get in the way of people just loving the songs in a simple and uncomplicated way. Right. In death, Michael Jackson kind of severs himself and all the baggage around him from that beloved music. Exactly. So now with the success of this concert film,

the estate realizes they can control the story. And so, you know, they do a number of the normal things you would do after an artist dies. They mine the vaults for unreleased material. They reissue old records with bonus tracks, things like that. But then they start doing other things. One of the first big successes after the concert film is they make a deal with Cirque de Soleil. They build a whole show around his music. And as you would imagine, it's a Cirque to Solace show.

So it's about acrobats. It's about visuals. It's about music. It's not about allegations of sexual abuse or anything controversial. And similar to the concert film, it really overperforms. It's a draw for audiences. Actually, it's still running today. And from there, the estate goes on to develop a Broadway show, MJ the musical.

And describe that show. So that's essentially a jukebox musical that very canally takes place during the rehearsals for the dangerous tour in 1992. So this is a year before that first accuser, Jordan Chandler, comes forward. So the audience is placed in this moment in time when completely uncomplicated Michael Jackson fandom

is still possible. And they really pulled out all the stops for the show. Lynn Notage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, wrote the book. And very coyly hints at certain dark secrets Jackson might have. The show is built around this reporter from MTV who's there to interview him at the rehearsals. And this reporter character senses that he has a dark secret.

And it's secret is eventually revealed to be an addiction to pills, which is a completely acceptable rock star vice. Right. Rather than the dominant story at his death, which is his relationship with young boys. Yes. And it works. It goes on to be.

a big hit. So there's now a very clear playbook that the estate is using in this rehabilitation project, and it's telling the story about Michael Jackson and death that was not being told at the end of his life,

that celebrates the music, and, to a large degree, in the form of that musical, even the man in an uncomplicated and pretty sanitized way. Yes. and everything is basically going according to plan

until a documentary premieres at Sundance in 2019 that threatens the entire project. We'll be right back. So Mark, I think we've reached the leaving Neverland moment in this story. That's the name of the documentary about Michael Jackson that comes out in 2019, and I remember it really well because we did a daily episode about it, and it was kind of a cultural phenomenon.

But just remind us why that documentary was so important and why it imperils this project. Right. Well, this documentary came out really when Me Too was in full swing. He was one of the kindest, most gentle, loving, caring people I knew. And it gets picked down. by HBO, and so an enormous number of people see it. And he also sexually abused me for seven years.

And it was an incredibly powerful film. I grew up in a little town called Seamy Ballet. I was pretty happy. I'm pretty outgoing. Kind of a performer, I guess. My father worked at a rubbish company. So we had a family rubbish house. It's the story of two men, James Safechuck,

and Wade Robson, who both claim Jackson sexually abused them is boys. So taking showers together and you know fondling and kissing. So him kissing me, I mean like full open mouth tongue in mouth

kissing. Basically in the film just walk the audience through this horrific grooming process that they claim took place in stomach churning detail. Him talking to me, you and I, we were meant to be together. You know, and this

is us showing each other that we love each other. And it's quite powerful and compelling. And then we get up in the morning like nothing had ever happened and go have another day filled with childhood magical games and adventures. And the estate, I think, justifiably criticized the filmmaker for not including them in any way, including any sort of rebuttal, but regardless... After I saw leaving Netherlands for the first time... People like Oprah, an abuse survivor herself, endorsed the film.

I tried and tried and tried to get the message across to people that sexual abuse was not just abuse. It was also sexual seduction. Hosted a special with the two accusers. And I know people all over the world are going to be in an uproar and debating whether or not Michael Jackson did these things or not whether these two men are lying or not lying. But for me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson.

It was a moment, and it felt like it could be a moment for some sort of reckoning. Right. And in the face of these projects that the estate had blessed and promoted from the concert to Circus Soleil and so on, it felt like a genuine cultural rebuttal to all of that that was breaking through. Exactly. the Financial Times reported that his music essentially stopped appearing in ads almost entirely after the documentary came out. And the film, it was kind of a sensation. It was all over social media,

and it had basically reset the conversation around Jackson in a way that was completely opposite everything the estate had been working to do, which was to keep the focus on the music and not the man and the controversies surrounding the man. Now that's all that everybody could think about. Right. And in a way that seemed kind of impossible, perhaps, to go back from? It would seem so, but the estate essentially had a two-pronged strategy.

First, they went hard after the film itself, leaving Neverland. And they did it in a pretty unusual way. They went back and found a contract that Michael Jackson had signed with HBO, In 1992, when they aired a concert film live from Bucharest. And in the contract, there was some fairly standard language, non-disparagement language. And the lawyers for the estate argued that airing leaving Neverland 30 years later was a violation of that non-discaragement clause, a pretty unusual argument to be making. But eventually, neither side will talk about what. happened except to say that it was amicably settled, but they did reach a settlement and you can't

find Leading Neverland on HBO's platforms anymore. Wow. So the estate gets this documentary that has gripped the nation that Oprah is talking about on her show taken off of HBO and basically removed from circulation. Yeah, there's no way to watch the film in the U.S. legally. Okay, well, what's the second prong of the strategy? They also thought about making their own documentary, and instead they decided to make a biopic, which could be the ultimate brand reset. So they start putting together this A-list team of talent,

that they get Antoine Fuqua, the director of Training Day, and the Equalizer franchise. Jafar Jackson, his nephew, plays Michael. They have Graham King producing. He made the Queen Biopic. Bohemian Rhapsody a few years earlier, which had been a huge massive hit, grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide. And music biopics, if they work properly, they bind the music to a feel-good

story, a triumphant story, where the audience can enjoy these songs they love at sort of maximum volume with fantastic visuals. But they can also feel connected to the artist as a person as a sort of character in a movie. Think of, you know, every recent biopic you can think of from Ray to a complete unknown, the Dylan biopic, to Elvis, to Bohemian Rhapsody. And when those work, they really work. And so what does the estate's plan to make this biopic do the work that you just described and be the ultimate reset of the Michael Jackson brand? The wild thing about this strategy, I got hold of copy of the original. script for the biopic. And it wasn't just Jackson denying the accusations. It went much,

much further than that into what I found to be morally questionable territory. It presented the accuser's father as an extortionist and a grifter. It fully exonerated Jackson by presenting very contested evidence as if it was fact. And you can see some of the script, the past script in the current film, which goes out of its way to present Jackson is this very innocent man-child with no friends and his love of children is completely innocent and a beautiful thing in the telling of this version of the movie he's visiting them in hospitals and things like that and that script i saw the branca character seeing all these kids visiting neverland says something like you know i'm not worried about them i'm worried about the parents there are

lots of greedy people out there so this original script very much portrays michael jackson as the victim of greedy opportunistic parents. Very much so. And specifically naming the Chandler family, the family of this 1993 accuser. But that was not the movie that ultimately lands in theaters. No, because in a fairly unprecedented event, they completed principal photography.

The movie was done. And only at that point, somehow, did they realize the settlement with Chandler and his family, signed way back in 1993, had a clause prohibiting either side from ever depicting or discussing anything about the settlement or their relationship. Somehow this had been completely overlooked, and they didn't realize this existed until after the film was completed. Wow. Old legal clauses, big theme of this conversation. Yes, yes. So they had to reconvene, bring the cast and everyone back together, and shoot new material and completely cut out the final act of the film, which covered the accusation and Michael's in the telling of the film exoneration. That's all gone now.

So what does the final version of this biopic have to say about these accusations and about this enormous chapter of Michael Jackson's life? It says nothing about it. Very much like the musical, it stops well before any of those accusations took place. In the case of the movie, they stop at the very beginning of the Bad Tour in 1988. So there's plenty of distance between then and the first inklings of something more sinister. It's very much a hero's journey. It's Michael rising up and triumphing over. His father is really the villain of the film, Joseph Jackson.

Have you seen the movie, Mark? I have seen it. I had not seen it. My story came out before the movie was released. I wasn't invited to a screening, but I saw it yesterday. I mean, when your producer told me I needed to see the movie before taping this, I'll admit, I was feeling a bit resentful. I did not want to see this movie. And I was very surprised to say that I didn't hate it.

And I left the theater, you know, humming his songs. The reviews have been negative across the board. Critics really hate this film. I'm not defending it. I didn't love it. I understand why people enjoy this movie. What did you like about it? And what did you feel when you watched it?

You know, I think I share some of the hardwired nostalgia for Jackson before the fall. I still have a vinyl copy of thriller that I won as a kid and a radio call in. So I'm the exact right age to have grown up loving his music. And it's hard to resist those songs and to resist that version of Michael Jackson that was so predominant before everything else happened. I benefited from seeing the movie after having read this early version of the script, which I thought was terrible. having read all of these reviews, which, you know, lowered my expectation considerably. So I was coming into this movie expecting to really, really hate it. Right.

And I liked it more than that. But to state the obvious, Mark, and I say this with no malice, you've reported on the rehabilitation project of Michael Jackson, and you understand it better than anyone. And then... It still kind of worked on me. Yeah, you became its happy customer in the theater. Yeah, no. complete surprise. I mean, it's

powerful stuff. And again, it's a piece of propaganda. I understand what the film is doing, and I'm not arguing that it's a good film, but it works in its way. The average person who's going to

see this movie, who has made this movie such a massive hit, probably isn't carrying that baggage, probably isn't even aware of the reshoots or these other versions of the film that existed or could have been made. And if you just watch it for what it is, it's a sort of celebration of this specific period of his life. And just to say, you know, the movie made $200 million

its opening weekend, which is, you made it the most successful opening for a music biopic ever. And it could make a billion dollars worldwide. Mark, I want to talk about how we should think about this movie's success. Because at the end, of the day, I'm not breaking any news here, it is about as sanitized a version of the Michael Jackson story as one could possibly fathom, and audiences are eating it up. And that makes me think back to a conversation I had back in 2019 with our colleague Wesley Morris when leaving Neverland came out. And that movie asked all of us to reckon with the artist and the art and the scandal. And something that Wesley said back then is still

ringing in my ears right now. He concluded that it was on all of us to live with the messiness of what Michael Jackson represents. And he said, literally, the work is on us, and it's really hard work. We don't want to do that work. And is, Is that the not so huge revelation of this movie that, when presented with the opportunity to not do that work and celebrate this man, to think about the allegations and the people who suffered and the lives that were derailed, the youth that will never be reclaimable, we choose not to do it? I think that's exactly right.

And I think the fiasco of having to remake the movie, all of that bad press they got in the lead-up, I think that ended up being the best thing that could have happened to the filmmakers in the estate. Because had that original version of the film come out, I think it would have situated the audience right in the middle of that messiness that you're describing, even though they were doing their best to proclaim his innocence, I don't know how that would have sat with audiences. Who knows? Maybe people would have just bought it. But I think that would have been a much more uncomfortable position to put audiences in. It would have made it much more difficult to just enjoy the music. The version of the movie that they ended up having to make completely elides that, and I think

it's been to their benefit, and it's certainly what a lot of audience members want to see. Right. And perhaps somewhere out there, there are people who want to do this hard work of reckoning with the fullness of Michael Jackson. But for the moment, there's a clear playbook that the estate has established for reaching that much larger audience that does not want to do that work. Yeah, and I think that largely rests on, you know, the sui generous nature of Michael Jackson himself and his music. And I mean, I think you have to give credit to John Branca and the estate. He's a very shrewd operator, and they've made a number of incredibly savvy moves since Jackson died. But ultimately, Without Jackson's music, without songs like Billy Jean, P-Y-T, you rock my world, thriller,

Man in the Mirror, will you be there? Without his singularity, as, you know, one of the most important artists of his era, you don't get people coming out to this movie. In these numbers, you don't get this kind of worldwide show of love. it all comes back to what he did as a musician. Right. Without him, there's no brand to reinvent. Yeah. Well, Mark, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to another day. The United States and Iran traded a tax on Thursday, even as both countries negotiated a long-term peace deal that could end the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States said that Iran had tried but failed to attack three U.S. military ships. In response, the U.S. struck a variety of Iranian military sites responsible for those attacks. Speaking to reporters, President Trump said that despite the attacks, a week's old ceasefire remained in place.

They trifled with us today. We blew them away. They trifled. I call that a trifle. I'll let you know when there's no cease. You won't have to know. And the Times reports that the United States has reached a bleak milestone. The size of its debt, $31.3 trillion, now surpasses the nation's total economic output. The source of the problem is well known. The United States is spending far more money than its earning through taxes. Over time, that mismatch could trigger a fiscal.

crisis in which America can no longer afford to pay the interest on its own debt. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Natt, Mujzevi and Eric Kruppke. It was edited by Brendan Klingenberg with help from Michael Benoit. Contains music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, Rowan Emisto, and Diane Wong, and sound design by Alicia Baitou. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the daily.

I'm Michael Mubarb. See you on Sunday.