The new Michael Jackson biopic reportedly cut all Neverland Ranch scenes after a decades-old legal agreement made the original version “essentially unreleasable”
Posted by sfgate
The new Michael Jackson biopic reportedly cut all Neverland Ranch scenes after a decades-old legal agreement made the original version “essentially unreleasable”
Posted by sfgate
14 Comments
what frustrates me about this movie is, there is potential for an excellent Michael Jackson biopic, but no way would his estate sign off on that version
How did they just forget about that? Considering his estate was involved with the film, it makes no sense that no one there knew about that agreement.
why did they do that, did something bad happen there 😔
Fuck Michael Jackson and those who support him.
The story over this doesn’t make a lot of sense. First, because the lawyer who runs the Jackson estate was also one of Jackson’s lawyers when he was alive, and was involved with the crafting of the settlement with the Chandler family. This is a fairly garden-variety clause in these kinds of settlements. Why wouldn’t the lawyer have remembered it, or at least gone over the paperwork again before shooting?
Second, even if that clause hadn’t existed, the way these scenes have been described suggest that the depiction of the Chandlers in the movie was going to be potentially defamatory. The studio/estate/production companies would have likely needed–or at least would have been advised to seek–clearance from the Chandler family regardless, or they would have been putting themselves at risk for lawsuits. Why did nobody bring up that up before shooting this treatment?
Third, even if they were prevented from covering Jordan Chandler’s story in the movie, that doesn’t mean they needed to change the entire plot. The agreement wouldn’t have prevented them from using a fictionalized version of the allegations, with names and details changed. This would have likely required some level of reshoots, but not the extensive ones that it took to change the entire plot of the movie? Why did they choose the more expensive option?
At the end of the day, it sounds like there’s some interesting stories about clashes on this set between the estate and the creative team about how they wanted to tell the story. I hope we get more info about them someday …
I hate this shit so much.
There are so many icons to celebrate that *didn’t* inarguably sleep with little boys in their bed or have drawings of naked little boys in their room.
And didn’t one kid literally describe the pattern of vitiligo on the under side of MJ’s penis that could only be visible when it was erect?
At best he was a weirdo who did weird shit with children that will stick with them forever to soothe his own demons. At worst (and using common sense) he was a pedophile.
Anyone who supports him is also a weird ass pedo defender in my book and if he were still alive I’d love to see them offer up their own children to spend the night with him at Neverland.
People don’t understand that MJ’s estate would have LOVED to have these events in the film. The movie is already one of the greatest MJ propaganda pieces of all time and portrays him as an infallible, Christlike being. It’s currently being consumed by the masses in droves and they believe all of it. The original cut of the film would have portrayed him as the hapless victim of evil schemers and that narrative would have been solidified for the general public.
The lawyers of MJ’s accusers anticipated the inevitability of a movie happening some day and proactively made is a clause in the settlement that he and his estate could never be involved in a fictional portrayal of the events that occurred because their clients would be viciously slandered and immortalized as evil from now until the end of time.
Downvote me all the way to hell. Biopics are just blatantly fictional movies. If they weren’t, they would be documentaries.
Did people actually think they were going to release a movie that went into the child molestation allegations?
Everything about the original plot that has gotten leaked has made me okay with it getting cut. The Jackson Estate has spent thirty years slandering Jordan Chandler for the crime of being a child who was molested by their meal ticket the last thing he and the world needed was that slander to become the last third of a whitewashed marketing exercise they called a biopic where his abuser is a too good for this world angelic statue.
Unfortunately the clause that prevents his story from being chewed up and spat up into a fictional narrative apparently doesn’t exist for Jackson’s numerous other victims which makes extremely nervous for the sequel. The fact that everyone involved in this movie been using ‘we’re going to mention the allegations in the sequel’ as an excuse to bat anyone’s criticisms of the movie of a cheap ahistorical piece of trash is one of the ghoulish things I’ve witnessed in recent memory. Needless to say I don’t trust the people who are using child sexual assault as a cheap sequel hook to portray any of this in a way that isn’t nakedly exploitative at best.
He was a child rapist. He needs a movie of his life as much as Cosby.
instead of asking if annie was okay, they should’ve asked the kids
Ppl talk about Michael’s situation so weirdly. They’re like “see the estate is trying to white wash things!”
But…who do you know that would openly want to revisit child molestation claims whether they were innocent or guilty? The mere accusation, even if false, can stick with a person forever. The rational move for a person in either position would be to use legal protections to not have this topic brought up repeatedly lol
we knew this when what’s her name his daughter had posted that it was garbage that only a niche diehard fan would like, no?
her: vindicatiooooooon.gjf