By Adekeye Adebajo
Life and legacy
The recent release of the movie Michael – depicting the life of music superstar, Michael Jackson – has predictably triggered fierce debates about his mixed legacy. Jackson’s music provided the soundtrack of my youth and that of two generations of adoring fans around the world. He sold over 400 million albums: more than any other artist. His 1982 Thriller remains the best-selling record of all time, with 70 million vinyl sales (128 million with digital downloads and audio streams).
His 1987-1989 Bad concert tour was watched by 4.4 million people around the globe, and grossed $125 million (worth $325 million today). Sony Music bought half of his music catalogue for a record $750 million in 2024. Jackson won 13 Grammy awards (including a record eight in 1984), while his 1983 video “Billie Jean” opened the door for other black artists on the previously lily-white MTV. A posthumous 2021 Broadway tribute, MJ The Musical, has won four Tony awards, grossed $328 million, and been seen by 2.3 million people.
Along with the legendary Motown black music label – with stars like Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye – Michael, the precocious 9-year old lead singer of the Jackson 5, from the 1960s, helped smash some of the most formidable social barriers in apartheid America. However, by the time of his death at the age of 50 in June 2009 from acute propofol intoxication, Jackson was $500 million in debt.
From 1993, he faced numerous child abuse allegations (having invited young children to share his bedroom on his Neverland estate in California). He consistently denied all of these charges, and though acquitted in the only trial in 2005, his payment of a $23 million settlement to the family of his 13-year old accuser, Jordan Chandler, in 1994, and the persistent allegations, badly tarnished his reputation. After a 2019 HBO documentary, Leaving Neverland, in which two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, accused Michael of having abused them as children (Jackson’s estate noted that both accusers had previously denied, under oath, that any abuse had occurred), there were calls to “cancel” his music.
Michael: The movie
The new $200 million movie, Michael, made with the support of Jackson’s estate and most of his family, must thus be seen as part of efforts by his canny estate executors – his long-time lawyer, John Branca, and music executive, John McClain – to restore and preserve the superstar’s brand.
They appear to have succeeded spectacularly, despite the carping of critics who have slammed the movie as sentimental hagiography that fails to deal with its subject’s flaws. Hollywood biopics – as with those about Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Freddie Mercury – however, rarely dwell on the sins of their heroes, with filmmakers often constrained by the fact that they need the consent of the artists or their estates to use their original music.
The first striking observation about Michael is that – like its perfectionist subject – it set out consciously to recruit the very best in the industry: African-American director, Antoine Fuqua (who directed Denzel Washington to an Oscar in Training Day); Oscar-winning producer, Graham King, who oversaw the most lucrative music biopic of all time: the $911 million-grossing 2018 Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody; and Oscar-winning cinematographer, Australian-South African, Dion Beebe. The film, however, became embroiled in controversy, as scenes portraying abuse allegations by Jordan Chandler had to be scrapped due to the terms of a 1994 settlement.
This delayed Michael’s release for a year, and increased its production costs by $50 million. Against all predictions, the film, nevertheless, made $217 million in the first week of its release, exceeding the previous highest grossing opening for a biopic: the 2023 Oppenheimer.
Michael portrays his life from poverty in Gary, Indiana, to celebrity in Los Angeles. Amidst panoramic sound effects, the film skilfully uses live concerts and music videos to perform Jackson’s greatest hits: “I Want You Back”, “Never Can Say Goodbye”, “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Thriller”, and “Beat It”, culminating in his 1988 Wembley Stadium performance of “Bad” in London, which ends the film with the promise: “His Story Continues.”
The movie innovatively tells the story from Jackson’s perspective, consciously setting out to balance the damaging allegations of paedophilia with examples of Michael’s generosity: visiting children in hospital and donating $1.5 million to a children’s Burn Centre after Jackson himself nearly died from third-degree burns sustained from his hair catching fire during a Pepsi advert in 1984. We see Michael’s love of animals, complete with a pet chimpanzee, llama, and giraffe.
The story centres mainly around two crucial relationships. His scowling, manipulative, and avaricious father Joseph (impressively played by the Afro-Latino Oscar-nominated, Colman Domingo), who beats his young son with a belt for not singing perfectly in tune.
In stark contrast, is Michael’s empathetic mother, Katherine, with whom he shared such a close bond that Jackson did not move to his own home in Neverland until the age of 30.
Michael’s nephew Jaafar – son of his brother, Jermaine – has garnered rave reviews for capturing the spirit of his uncle’s spectacular dance moves in the film, while lip-synching the original songs. Five of Michael’s eight siblings are very much part of the supporting cast in the movie. His siblings Janet, Randy, and Rebbie, however, withheld consent for the movie.
His daughter, Paris, dismissed the film as “a lot of just full-blown lies,” while his sons, Prince and Bigi, backed the production.
The one relationship that could have enjoyed more attention was that with Quincy Jones, the legendary African-American composer who produced Jackson’s three biggest-selling albums: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). Jones was indispensable to Michael’s mega-success, and their creative tension transformed pop music in the 1980s. A bitter rupture sadly resulted in Jones not attending Jackson’s funeral service, and later suing his estate over royalties.
Protecting the brand: Greed and genius
That Jackson’s legacy has endured and his fortune soared after his death, has been due to the greed and genius of America’s corporate capitalism, as embodied by the astute executors of his estate. As soon as Jackson died in 2009, Branca convened some of the best lawyers and accountants in the music business to devise a strategy to save his estate from bankruptcy and to protect his brand. They rushed out the video This Is It in four months, based on the rehearsals Michael had been conducting for 50 comeback shows in London before his untimely death.
The documentary made an impressive $268 million, even as his record sales spiked. Within a year, the estate had made $1 billion. Its $500 million debt has today been transformed into a $3.5 billion profit, based largely on deals with Sony; a Las Vegas show, Michael Jackson ONE; MJ: The Musical; the biopic Michael; and the continuing sales and streaming of his work.
The estate also ruthlessly used a 1992 non-disparagement clause that HBO had signed with Jackson to screen his Bucharest concert to force the company to remove the damaging Leaving Neverland documentary from its streaming service.
His continuing successes from the grave, two decades after his death, have confirmed Jackson’s reputation as the greatest entertainer of all time. The fact that his story and music have generated so much interest among millions of older and newer generations of fans, has bolstered the timelessness of his work: a feat unlikely to be reached neither by Michael’s contemporaries, Prince and Madonna, nor by current superstars Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Drake.
With the release of Michael, Jackson has achieved in death a remarkable resurrection that would have been impossible if he had lived.
Prof. Adebajo is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa.
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