Michael Jackson accusers denounce upcoming biopic
John C. Carpenter, who represents Leaving Neverland subjects Wade Robson and James Safechuck, called the upcoming film "propaganda"
Aux News Michael Jackson
Even after all the strides of the #MeToo movement, we’ve seen example after perturbing example of exposed predators allowed to simply waltz back into their previously exalted place in society—even posthumously. That’s what’s happening with Michael Jackson, at least according to John C. Carpenter, the attorney representing Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who allege that the “Thriller” singer groomed and assaulted them in his Neverland Ranch compound from the ages of 7 and 10, respectively. Robson and Safechuck—the subjects of HBO’s bombshell 2019 documentary, Leaving Neverland—are currently in the process of taking Jackson estate-owned companies MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures to court for allegedly enabling their abuse.
While an official court date hasn’t been set yet, the plaintiffs have hit a potential snag. Lionsgate is currently working on Michael, a high-profile Jackson biopic starring the artist’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson, set to premiere in April 2025. While press releases for the film promise a “riveting and honest portrayal of the brilliant yet complicated man,” a leaked screenplay obtained by Puck News and confirmed by Variety says otherwise, at least according to Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed, who called it “startlingly disingenuous.” The film, which is closely tied to the Jackson estate, reportedly follows their position that the singer was innocent and a victim of false accusation.
Carpenter and his team are requesting a trial before the film is released, but the lawyer recently told The Daily Beast that the chances of that happening are “poor—unless the estate changes their tune.” Still, he’s confident that “the truth will prevail” regardless of any changes in public opinion that the film might inspire. “It complicates jury selection, but it’s not insurmountable at all,” he said.
“We just want to get the truth out there as soon as possible… and the sooner we get the truth out, then we don’t have to worry about the propaganda,” Carpenter continued. “Or maybe the movie’s a flop and no one watches it.”
Last month, Reed also voiced his strong objections to the Antoine Fuqua-directed biopic in an op-ed for The Guardian. “To the film-makers, I say: how will you represent the moment when Jackson, a grown man in his 30s, takes a child by the hand and leads him into that bedroom? How will you depict what happens next?” he wrote. “By sidestepping the question of Jackson’s predilection for sleeping with young boys, you are broadcasting a message to millions of survivors of child sexual abuse. That message is: if a pedophile is rich and popular enough, society will forgive him.”
61 Comments
Just a reminder, Jackson was found not guilty on all charges in 2005.
Yeah so was OJ. Your point is?
That is primarily because Jackson had successfully groomed his victims into testifying in his defense. This led to his acquittal. You really need to watch “Leaving Neverland” so you know what you’re talking about here.
and the american justice system? well it’s flawless ladies and germs. especially if you’re rich, famous and a pedophile.
It’s not too surprising to have a conservo-troll wave the flag for a pedophile, at least when the pedophile was rich and powerful. But I suppose it represents progress that the fact that Jackson was African-American exists and still can have conservo-pundits try to defend him rather than use the problem to try to further attacks on all who aren’t white.
There’s a reason that documentary isn’t in wide release anymore.
I regularly defend pedophiles and am looking for friends, you seem cool! What’s your facebook?
He’s dead, bud. He’s not gonna fuck you.
The Leaving Neverland people got their say with the documentary. They didn’t get any promises it would be the final word.Having said that, I’d rather fuck a snake than see the biopic.
Dress up like an Eastern European mail order bride and you can fuck Donald Trump.
I want this film to come out so it can make a couple of thousand dollars because no one wants to watch it and the Jackson estate finds out that they can’t whitewash this child-fucker’s name.
Didn’t Michael whitewash himself when he was alive?
I want this film to come out so it can make a couple of thousand dollars because no one wants to watch it and the Jackson estate finds out that they can’t whitewash this child-fucker’s name.
Eesh. Imagine wanting to see a movie about Michael Jackson.
Jackson’s accusers were groomed to feed on attention and praise by Michael. This caused them to want to help testify in his favor… at first. His legal team coached them into lying for him.
Once his accusers broke the cycle of victimization and were now willing to go against Michael, his legal team used those very same lies to attack their credibility. It’s a genius move by his lawyers but anyone paying attention now knows that Michael is very clearly a pedophile.
There was an excellent Esquire article that was published in the wake of the first series of accusations (Jackson eventually settled out of court). What I remember most was that he had motion detectors arranged along the hallway approaching his bedroom. This was so Jackson could be alerted when staff was approaching and obviously cover up / stop / disguise whatever he was doing with his ‘sleep over guests’. Wonder if that little tidbit will be in the documentary?
I was going to point this out. Thank you for doing so. To me, this is a very damning piece of evidence.
That detail for me was damning. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I believed the accusers, but there was alway wiggle room for MJs defenders to say, “Well they’re lying, they just want money” etc, etc. But they can’t explain away that. Why the hell do you have system to alert you in your BEDROOM when someone is coming, unless you are doing something in there you don’t want them to uncover?
not exactly damning to want your bedroom activities private
You lock your door. Except you can’t when you’ve got kids on your bedroom which MJ knew would be suspicious…
Do you have motion detectors to alert you when someone is coming too?
It is if you have little boys in there with you.
And another groomer reveals himself….
I know whenever I’ve got little male children in my room it’s like leave us alone we’re in the bedroom! Sheesh. The nerve of some people.
It is when you have children regularly sleeping over.
Not gonna deny that it’s damning, and I totally believe the accusers here. But in total fairness, I think there’s countless teenagers and parents of teenagers alone who could only wish they had motion sensors set up to let them know they were about to interrupt some ‘private time’.That said, a lock on the door would be cheaper and less sus.
That’s precisely the issue. He’s having private time…WITH CHILDREN.As for a lock, it would be more sus, because it risked raising alarm bells, if you’ve got kids in your bedroom, and someone comes and finds the door locked. But if you have a secret warning system, you can keep the door unlocked, and have enough time to put everything in order so it all looks above board. It’s all so, so bad.
Sure, absolutely, I’m not disputing it’s bad in any way. But my point is just that surely the real clincher for how bad is is the very fact that he had children there in this set-up in the first place, not just that he wanted to be sure that no one could walk in on him in his private quarters. I suspect countless rich people with more money to spend on gadgets and servants than anything else likely have similar set-ups without the paedo implications simply because they don’t also have kids in there.
This pretty much cinched it for me.
Martin Bashir might be a lying piece of shit, but still.
really curious what the reception to this movie is gonna be amongst the general population.
Same. Jackson’s public profile is right down the middle at the moment. There’s a contingent of fans who believe he was a perfect angel who could do no wrong and was unjustly persecuted in life, and a whole other camp focused on accusations against him.
also really curious what the average, say, teen or early 20’s person thinks of MJ. obviously the fans are the built-in market here, but if you’re someone who missed the entire era he was an actual popstar…do you care about a normal biopic? can you be made to care? feels like something where the discourse is gonna tear itself apart, too…but then, is it worth seeing to have an opinion and participate? idk.
my son is 19, he’s always loved his music. He was 5 when he passed away so he never really grew up with all the weirdness and allegations, although he knows about it he chooses to just enjoy the music. It’s what I do. Especially those nearly perfect first 2 on Epic. I won’t be seeing the movie however. I can’t see it being either good or an entertaining trainwreck and I certainly won’t pay money to see it.
I don’t know how someone can still enjoy his music. You need to watch “Leaving Neverland.”
also really curious what the average, say, teen or early 20’s person thinks of . . .
NOPE!
I think there’s a bit more nuance; a lot of people acknowledge the accusations but still enjoy the music.
I became aware of pop music right after Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” changed the world for everyone. Precisely nobody I knew back then cared one whit about Michael Jackson, even the relatively few friends I had who liked music made by black people. So when you say “Michael Jackson fans” I usually picture, like, socially awkward Romanians in unfashionable sneakers. I mean, I realize that multiple pop fandoms exist at one time, and people who were teens when Michael went huge didn’t disappear overnight, but, honestly, the idea that you had to be A Bit Off to really dig the guy has never really gone away for me.
haha, i used to dj weddings a lot and having mj at the ready was a prerequisite. i think it’s less that they’re outright ‘mj fans’ and more ‘normal people with generic pop taste’, not to denigrate the music it’s obviously the best possible version of pop music.so yeah that’s another thing.
Fuck off, man
Right down the middle of people who like his music and totally believe he was a child raping monster and people who don’t like his music and totally believe he was a child raping monster?
Same. There’s a large swath of the populace, myself among them, who missed the King of Pop era. They only know of MJ as the plastic surgery-obsessed freak who molested children.
Any movie that doesn’t try to reckon with THAT is a non-starter.
Crikey, I only heard the news about Colman Domingo being cast as Joe Jackson and thought this would be a young Michael/Jackson 5 movie, not a straight-up biopic. Thinking it was the former I expected a nuanced, unflinching portrayal. Learning it’s the latter obliterates any impression the filmmakers are interested in nuance or honesty.
yeah, to go out of their way to write him as innocent instead of just…making a movie that ends in 1982 or whatever is very…well let’s say ‘confident’.
What remains to be seen is what “innocent” means in the context of this movie; they could do everything from explicitly address and refute the allegations to simply ignoring his personal life.And by remains to be seen, I mean I’ll might google it someday if I remember to.
based on what the article says i think saying the movie says he’s innocent is different than ignoring, but that means i also have to take an av club article at its word haha.
I went ahead and clicked through to the Variety article, which directly explains the script was leaked and apparently it “makes a point to discredit” the allegations. Sounds shitty!
thats a shame because he’s a fantastic actor
He was awesome in The Wiz
If we had the same “believe survivors” attitude that we have now, he might have survived in court but the damage to his reputation would have been irreversible.
Also I saw one of the wildest moments on TV in my life when E! reenacted the trial every day, and they had Jimmy Kimmel play Jay Leno, and Jay Leno plugged his show on the stand, so Kimmel did it too.
There’s been a push by the Jackson estate recently to rehabilitate his image post “Neverland”. I grew up with MJ, I fucking loved him and his music, and I understand separating art from artist. I even have my personal theory that all of his substantial childhood trauma resurfaced after the Pepsi hair incident and mixed with the subsequent drug abuse and plastic surgery addictions to create a monster. But regardless of my own personal coping theories to deal with a childhood icon turning out to be so awful, what matters is he was a SERIAL CHILD RAPIST. And the Jackson estate is using these anodyne documentaries on Netflix, its Jackson musical, and the upcoming biopic to wipe that out of the public consciousness and overtake the voices of the victims. It’s deplorable.
This. It’s about money pure and simple. MJ is, or at least was, the highest earning dead artist out there, so you have to nip all this talk about his crimes in the bud, or sooner or later all that valuable IP will become as radioactive as, say, the Cosby Show.
I’m genuinely weirded out by the comment your responding to…. why on earth is that person defending the an adult and children’s right to privacy in a bedroom…? There’s sex-shaming and then there’s criminal behaviour dude.
You know, it just occurred that we could have a discussion about the Michael Jackson Pepsi Hair Incident and the Clarence Thomas Coke Hair Incident. This planet is an odd place, sometimes.
What about the R2-D2 RC Cola Hair . . . Accident?
The catastrophic Shasta Cola body hair hecatomb of ‘89: I was there!
I can’t stand to hear his overrated music. I hate seeing people copying his dumb dance moves, crotch grab and all. I hate the music during the extended dance scene from Thriller, it’s just an annoying loop of nothingness. Dote doh dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka dote doh dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka dote doh dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka dote doh…This fucking bitch went on TV and tried to normalize his child grooming ways, saying that sharing your bed is the most loving thing you can do, but telling on himself that he shares a bed with multiple children. He cuddles boys on camera, holding their hand, and not in a handshake grip guiding parental kind of hand holding, but the intertwined fingers I really need to fuck this kid right now kind of hand holding. And he said he was just a child himself, Peter Pan. The thing about Peter Pan is that he only has a child’s body, he has the years of an adult and only lives to avoid responsibility, with the moral of the fucking story being you need to grow up and not be like Peter Pan. Even after the first trial, instead of thinking, “That was a close call, I better not push my luck,” he fucking doubles down and rapes more children, a revolving door of replacement baby boyfriends, like some sort of gay Leonardo DiCaprio if they were 15 years younger. He can’t get enough, and getting away with it emboldened his lust for tiny dicks. I wish there existed a Hell for him to suffer in right now.
Thank you for noticing Peter Pan’s child body. Can you describe the birthmark on Peter Pan’s peter?
I appreciate your passion and share your side on this take but, I gotta say, it was kind of weird that you wrote “I really need to fuck this kid right now”…
Didn’t some of these kids identify a birth mark or mole or something on Jackson’s penis which would only really be visible during an erection? You can’t really get more damning evidence than that.
It was actually a tattoo. When flaccid you could see “W Y”. The kid asked “Oh, is your girlfriend’s name Wendy?” Michael said “HEE-hee…no, when erect it says ‘Welcome to Jamaica. Have a nice day’!”