Today, Explained - The Michael Jackson "biopic"

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

The movie is breaking records at the box office despite — or maybe because of — moonwalking past the abuse allegations. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram at a matinee showing of Michael. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new Michael Jackson biopic doesn't tell the full story. In fact, it ends in the 80s at the peak of Michael's career. People online have taken issue with this fact. The team behind Michael should make a Hitler movie that ends with him triumphantly receiving the Iron Cross first-class medallion for his distinguished service on the Western Front in World War I. R. Kelly Biopic that ends with the release of Space Jam, music from and inspired by the motion picture.

Jeffrey Epstein, the story of New York's greatest financier. But for all the shade, Michael is a massive hit. It's currently the biggest movie in the world with the biggest opening ever for a biopic. People are getting up and dancing in theaters. What the dancers might not know is that this movie had to get made, then unmade, and then made again because of the elephant in the editing room. We're going to tell that story on today, Explain from Vox. Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are.

But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day, but if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why Thumbtack works so well. It matches you with top-rated local pros with photos, reviews and credentials all in one convenient place.

For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. Want to go electric without sacrificing fun? That's the Volkswagen ID4. All electric and thoughtfully designed to elevate your modern lifestyle. The Volkswagen ID4 is fun to drive with instant acceleration that makes city streets feel like open roads. Plus a refined interior with innovative technology always has. at your fingertips. The all-electric ID4.

You deserve more fun. Visit vW.ca to learn more. SUVW, German-engineered for all. Today explained. Matt Bellany is a founding partner of Puck, and he's maybe got more tea on the Michael movie than any other reporter on Earth. Well, this project begins in 2019

with the Leaving Neverland documentary that came out on HBO and featured the two men. main accusers of Michael Jackson in a very influential and pretty stark and harrowing documentary recounting the allegations against him. He told me if they ever found out what we were doing, he and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives. Secrets will eat you up.

You feel so alone? I want to be able to speak the truth as loud as I had to speak the lie for so long. That was devastating for the Michael Jackson estate, which had been pretty successful over the previous decade in rehabilitating Michael's image to the point where they were able to do a Broadway show. It is now one of the hottest tickets on Broadway, and the musical just earned, get this, 10 Tony nominations. And a Cirque de Soleil show in Las Vegas. All right, Michael Jackson won by Cirque de Soleil performs 10 shows. week at the Mandalay Resort and Casino. And the music was still popular around the world.

This documentary comes out and radio stations started pulling the songs. And outrage over the conduct, alleged conduct, was pretty widespread. So they decided that it was time for a movie. And Graham King, the producer of Bohemian Rhapsody, was very interested in doing a Michael Jackson movie. and he signed on to produce this, and they started on their way. So using the germ of this movie is explicitly a counter-narrative to the HBO documentary, leaving Neverland, which sort of tarnishes Michael Jackson's image around the world.

From the estate's perspective, 100%. That's what they wanted out of this project. But what's interesting about the original plan for the movie is that it explicitly took on the allegations against him. And in many ways, according to the original script, shot those allegations down. So I imagine you're one of the few people who saw a version of this movie that isn't the most popular movie in the world right now. What exactly was in this script and how does it differ from the movie that people are seeing right now? So the original script by John Logan opens with Michael Jackson at Neverland.

and there are police sirens outside, and they are there for him. And then it goes back into his whole rise to fame and how he got here. And the third act of the movie, the last 45 minutes or so, are Michael's life at Neverland and how he became increasingly detached from reality and surrounded by children. But then the accusers come for him. And the family of Jordan Chandler, the 13-year-old boy who ultimately made allegations against Jackson, they are portrayed as out to exploit money for him. And Michael is 100% presented as the victim of these allegations.

There's a strip search scene where the cops come to Neverland and conduct a strip search on him and he's crying. It's really tough to read in the script. And at the end of the movie, or at the end of the script, there's a conversation that Michael has with his mother about how it all ended up here. And it's really, it's kind of a sad moment about how he became this misunderstood figure in the culture. That's not in the ultimate movie.

None of that is in the movie. It stops at 1988 the Bad Tour, and the reason for that is the legal stuff. Not only does it stop at the Bad Tour, but it starts at the Bad Tour. Instead of starting in his Neverland estate and being a flashback into how did he get into all this trouble, it starts with him about to take the stage

at this triumphant moment in his career in the late 80s. And it's funny hearing you describe the movie that you read about in this script, it seems to make a lot more sense having seen the final product because they keep trying to set up that Michael Jackson is going to have this big split

with his family and that it's going to be a lot harder for him when he's on his own. And they keep trying to set up his relationship with kids because he's constantly caring for sick kids and giving kids gifts and hanging out with kids at toy store but it never really goes anywhere.

What we end up with in the final product is a weird sort of slight counter-narrative that seems to set up Michael as some sort of secular saint who just loved children and wanted to care for sick people and walk around his neighborhood with animals. It just seems kind of bizarre. It makes a lot more sense when you know that in the original script, that was ultimately weaponized against him in the eyes of the script. And others would argue that there was other nefarious. reasons for why he was so close to children, but that was 100% part of the message of the

original script. Right. You're describing a movie that had something to say, whether or not people agree with or not. It has something to say, which is that Michael Jackson was misunderstood and was innocent. Instead, we're left with a movie that has nothing to say. Tell me about the legal trouble that helped us end up with this movie. So after all of that was shot, all of the original script.

was shot, the estate discovered that in the 90s, there was a settlement with the family of Jordan Chandler that precluded either the estate or the family from dramatizing the events of the relationship between them. And the somewhat ironic part is that obviously that agreement was to prevent the family from selling their story for a movie or something like that. But then, 30 years later, it comes back to haunt the Jackson estate when they are trying to make a movie of their version of those occurrences. So once the lawyers discovered this, they alerted the producer, they alerted the studio, and all hell broke loose. They basically said, we can't release this movie. So they decided to take the script, cut it up, and do it as two movies. The first movie, the first movie, movie would be devoid of anything having to do with the allegations. It would just be about his

rise to fame. It would be an arc where the main tension is with Michael and his father, which was in the original script. That was there. But it wasn't the main storyline. Michael escaping his father was not the main storyline. And then if the movie is successful, which it now is, they plan to do a second movie that will engage more clearly with those allegations. I'm glad you brought up a second movie because I think the most interesting thing or the most surprising thing that happened in this entire movie was at the very end when three words appear on screen. His story continues.

So is this going to be the first musical biopic that gets a sequel? Uh, has there been another one? I don't believe there has. But obviously, once you know what the original plan was, it makes a lot more sense that they would cut it off and try to make two movies. And the demand seems to be there. That is what I want the world to feel. Magic. And the world showed up for the Michael Magic.

Raking in $97 million domestically and $217 million worldwide. That is demand for a sequel. So it makes sense they would do it. Now, it's going to be a huge challenge because they've got two issues. And I just talked about this with the head of Lionsgate, the studio, on the town. Some of the things that were in the script that you read and reported on obviously cannot be included. But continuing to get a deeper understanding of who Michael was, I think there are any number of ways the filmmakers will be able to pull that off. Basically, the challenges are they can't dramatize Jordie Chandler.

So that's out. Those allegations are out. And also, there's a second issue here. The fans and the general public have now shown that they are interested in a Michael Jackson movie that doesn't bring up the bad stuff. That is really just a celebration of the music and his personal narrative. Now, if they go there and make the darker and more controversial movie that engages with the allegation, Do the fans actually want that? Is that going to be successful?

I don't know the answer to that. The movie's obviously a huge success now, but, you know, leading up to its release and even since it's been released, there's a ton of people obviously criticizing the movie for having nothing to say, for sidestepping the allegations. How have the filmmakers responded to those critiques?

Is it just, oh, we're going to work on a sequel? Don't worry about it. Well, Antoine Fukuah, the director, did an interview with the New York, Yorker in which he was very respectful of the allegations, but also said, sort of questioned some of the double standards that go on out there. You know, people, there were some, there were some ugly parts of Elvis Presley's background that were not in that film. And nobody questioned that. And it was interesting to see him come out and say that.

The marketing for this movie has really focused on the music and the performance and kind of sidestepped the uglier stuff. And I think that that's all by design. They decided that they did not want to engage, which makes it even more interesting on the second movie because you sort of have to engage or else you're really going to get criticized. As you heard earlier, you can hear more about Michael on The Town with Matthew Bellany, how we should be thinking about what didn't make it into the movie.

in a minute on today's explain. Support for the short day comes from Chime. Banking can sometimes feel like you're paying someone else just to hold on to your money with all of the overdraft fees, minimum balance requirements, and monthly fees. It often doesn't seem worth it. Chime says that they're different and that they are changing the way people bank. Chime isn't just another banking app.

They can unlock smarter banking for everyday people. Chime provides products like MyPay, which can give you access to up to $500 of your paycheck, any time. You can forget overdraft fees, minimum balance fees, and monthly fees. Chime turns everyday spending into real rewards and progress. They say you can earn up to 3% APY on your savings, nearly eight times more than what traditional banks offer. Chime says they're not just smarter banking. They're the most rewarding way to bank. You can join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com slash explained.

That is chime.com slash explained. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and the secured Chime Visa credit card are provided by the Bank or Bank N.A. Option optional services and products may have fees or charges. See Chime.com slash fees info. Terms apply. Limited time only. Must open the new account and complete qualifying activities to earn rewards. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only.

Otherwise 1% APY applies. No minimum balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See Chime.com for details on applicable terms. Trying to complete your daily tasks can feel like driving along the highway on empty without a gas station in sight. If you're having a hard time finishing your day strong, then you might want to check out IM8's Daily Ultimate Essentials.

It's a daily all-in-one wellness drink that can give your body the support it needs without juggling a bunch of different supplements. IM8's Daily Ultimate Essentials is a go-to for getting the benefits of 16 different supplements in one tasty drink. Co-founded by David Beckham and crafted with insight from experts at Mayo Clinic, Cedar Sinai, and a former NASA chief scientist, it can simplify your wellness routine and make it easier to support your health. This drink is loaded with 92 nutrient-rich ingredients such as vitamins, minerals, adaptogens,

CO-Q10, MSM, and pre-pro and postbiotics. It's designed to help you feel good from the inside out. Feel your best self every day with IM8. Go to IM8health.com slash explained and use code explained for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's I-M-N-N-E-A-L-T-H-E-A-L-T-H dot com slash explained. Code Explained. For a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order.

I-M-8Health.com slash explained. Code Explained. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product has not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Support for Today Explain comes from Found. If you're a small business owner, you may know, that wrestling with your finances can get messy. A bank account here, quickbooks there, taxes and invoicing apps.

Before you know it, you're buried in expensive tools behind on books, unsure where your business really stands. But that's where Foundt comes in, says Found. Foun says they can help eliminate your finance clutter, giving you one platform that handles banking, bookkeeping, invoices, taxes. That means no more paying for multiple subscriptions or dealing with clunky apps. Fount says you can send invoices for free and pay your contractors, everything all from one app.

You can take back control of your business today. You can open a found account for free at found.com. That's f-o-u-und-d.com. Found is a financial technology company. It is not a bank, guys. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. You can join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with Found.

Today, Explained. My name is Steve Knopper. I am author of MJ, The Genius of Michael Jackson, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times and Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal and other publications. For people who maybe weren't around in the 80s and 90s, like I think both of us were, how big did Michael get? It's really difficult to sort of imagine in today's fragmented media and entertainment world just how gigantic Michael was. He was overwhelming. I mean, Quincy Jones, who is the producer of Thriller and Off the Wall, when they made the thriller album, his goal was to get people to buy many, many copies per household of the album. And that's what happened.

And it wound up selling, I think the latest number I saw over time is 70 million the albums sold. And that's just like an impossibility in 2026, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because, well, first of all, there's not really albums do not sell to that magnitude anymore. because everybody's streaming everything. And in today's world, because of the internet and because of streaming and downloading and all the other stuff that's happened,

there's communities of people for every artist. So, BTS is huge. But they're only huge in a fragment of the market. Taylor Swift is even huger. But even so, she's not even close to what Michael Jackson was in the 80s. And even before we get to the 90s and the allegations, this man wasn't eccentric. People could tell Michael was different, right?

Yeah, I mean, for a lot of reasons, he said all the time throughout his life and many others have made this point that he had an incredibly unique childhood. Ladies and gentlemen, would you greet? The Jackson Fire. By the time he was seven or eight years old, he was a major star.

He was on Motown. They were gigantic. They were BTS in their day. And he was very, very young to have experienced that. And he talked all the time. He repeated this detail about how he'd be in a recording studio. And I'd record for hours and hours. He'd be staring longingly at these kids playing across the street at a playground.

They'd be rooting and making noise and I would cry. And he was stuck in this recording studio doing all this work at a very young age. It'd make me sad. that I would have to go and work instead. And so as he grew up, he kind of like had to figure out why he was different, and he started to yearn for a childhood. And this made him, even as a young man in his late teens and early 20s, kind of yearned for friendships with children.

I mean, when people wonder why I always have children around, because I find the thing that I never had. through them. That was his version of how this played out. And then it all takes quite an ugly turn. I feel like I can still remember when it happened. And Michael Jackson was going to be on all the news channels one night. And then it was so weird to watch this guy who you thought was literally the coolest human being on earth,

having to talk about being, like, strip-searched by the police. It was the most humiliating ordeal of my life. one that no person should ever have to suffer. Right, right. I mean, that unfolded in a very complicated way in the early 90s where there was a boy who was 13 who accused him of sexual abuse, basically. The entertainer's life has become a tornado of rumors and accusations

since a teenage boy said Jackson sexually molested him. Michael Jackson denied it vehemently, said it never, happened. And then the Santa Barbara County Sheriff in California kind of picked up on these charges and moved forward with some kind of prosecution case. Our arrest warrant for Mr. Jackson has been issued on multiple counts of child molestation. But before anything could happen with the courts, the boy and his family settled with Michael Jackson. And so that never went to court. There was never any record of what did or did not happen and the whole thing kind of registered as in the media, certainly as a settlement.

Of course, it wasn't the last set of accusations. No, that's right. There have been other people, other boys generally who came forward and made allegations. But the whole thing kind of advanced in the early 2000s. And that story began when Michael kind of infamously went on a British television network. and spoke to a journalist named Martin Bashir in this documentary about how he commonly slept in a bed with children who were not his own or not part of his family. I have slept in a bed with many children.

I sleep in the bed with all of them. When McCullochookin were little, Kieran Culkin would sleep on this side, McCulley Cuck is on this side, his sister's in there. We're all just jamming the bed. And we wake up like dawn and go in the hot air balloon. He talked about it as if this was no big deal, It happens all the time.

It's healthy. And people were outraged. Another related thing that happened in that video was that there was a young boy and his family interviewed as part of that documentary, basically agreeing and supporting what Michael Jackson had said. The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone. You really think that.

Yeah. Of course. You're taking a position that you use every single night that you go into, you sleep, and you're trying it with another. But when the documentary came out and got all this negative attention for Michael Jackson, the boy and his family switched their stories.

And then they started accusing Michael Jackson of child sexual abuse, just as the previous boy had done in the early 90s. The prosecution picked up the case, and Michael Jackson went on trial in 2005 for child sexual abuse. Love to be a child. And Michael Jackson fan, we love to beat.

A chorus of collective voices cheering for Michael Jackson. And railing against the press. I think the press is trying to make this a freak show. And eventually, after a long period and quite an extended media circus at the courthouse, Michael Jackson was found not guilty by a jury. We, the jury in the above entitled case, find the defendant not guilty of a lewd act upon a minor child as charged in count five of the indictment, dated June 10th, 2005, four person number 80. After he passed in 2009, it seemed like there was, and my book came out during this period,

but it seemed like there was sort of a rush to lionize Michael Jackson again, and people seemed comfortable sort of saying, well, he was found not guilty by a court in 2005, so we can kind of restart experiencing his music with joy and no guilt again as perhaps we weren't able to before. And that period lasted for a few years. And there are a lot of tributes made to him and that sort of thing after this tragedy of his passing at just 50 years old. And then in 2019, this documentary on HBO came out called Leaving Neverland.

Hello, Wade. Today is your birthday. So congratulations. I love you. Goodbye. And what that is about is two now-grown men, Wade Robson and James Seychuk, who had been friends with Michael in an earlier period when they were boys. Robson actually testified at Michael Jackson's trial in 2005, defending him and saying

no child sexual abuse had ever happened. But this documentary that came out in 2019 was four hours, long, and both men detailed these very traumatized memories of what the King of Pop had allegedly done to them. I think it's worth asking here that Michael Jackson, you know, was never found guilty of abusing children in a court of law. Has there ever been any smoking gun definitive proof that he did this stuff? No.

No. all of these charges against him are in the category of accusation. And some people listening to this might say, what a naive person is saying that. But it's factually true. You know, he was found not guilty in a court in 2005. The leaving Neverland allegations are as vivid and believable as they may seem. They're just that. They're allegations.

And, you know, and then there's these more recent charges that are just coming up in court with this family who knew Michael, and those have yet to be adjudicated. And then the original charges that we talked about in 1993, those were settled. And I've had many arguments with friends over beers about, you know, does a settlement imply guilt? You can make a great argument for yes and you can make a great argument for no. But in the end, to answer your question, no, there's never been any definitive proof. Chris Rock weighed in on Michael Jackson when he was still alive. Another kid.

I'm fucking done. I'm talking with Michael. I was a fan my whole life. I am fucking done. I'm handed in my glove. Okay. Dave Chappelle weighs in on him and this documentary once he's dead and the doc comes out. I don't think he did it.

We know what? Even if he did do it? You know what I mean? I mean, it's Michael Jackson. Do you think some part of this is people saying, you know, whatever he did is done. He's dead. And I still love this music. And I'm ready to move on and just enjoy this movie.

I don't want to characterize it as not caring anymore. But maybe there's nothing I can do. This man also was incredible. Let me go celebrate that. Yeah. I mean, I think now we're getting into the territory of the validity of Judge the Art, not the artist. You know, and as you know, as everyone knows,

there are many, many, many examples of artists who have done terrible, horrific things. And yet we still like their work. James Brown, who was well known to have abused his spouses and other women that he was with, do we not listen to James Brown? I'm working on a book right now about funk music and the history of funk music.

Obviously, he plays a crucial role in that development. I can't ignore that. You know, you have to emphasize it. And I run into frustration about that, too, because I don't want to keep glorifying this guy. I mean, Africa Bombata just died, and he was a pioneer of hip hop, and it's not quite as well known, but he was accused of child sexual abuse as well.

And there's some evidence that suggests that he did it. I'm not going to say whether you did or didn't. He was a pioneer of hip-hop. Without him, hip-hop doesn't progress and doesn't become what it became. And so if you're writing the biography of him, you kind of have to acknowledge the good and the bad. Steve Knopper wrote a Michael Jackson biography that was published in 2015. I asked him if he'd keep the same title if it were published today. Oh, good question.

MJ the genius of Michael Jackson. Um, probably not. I'm Sean Ramos firm. Avi Shai Artsy produced our show today. Jolie Myers edited. David Tadashore mixed. Gabriel Dunatob checked the facts for today explained.