MICHAEL Jackson’s story is headed for Hollywood with the producer who helped make hit film “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the industry’s media report said on Friday.
Deadline, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter said producer Graham King had secured the rights, including music, from Jackson’s estate to make a feature film about the life of the “Thriller” singer, whose legacy has been tarnished by allegations of child sex abuse.
The movie is expected to span Jackson’s journey from child star to global icon that ended when he died in 2009 at age 50 of an overdose from a powerful sleeping aid just weeks before a planned comeback concert.
Deadline, citing unnamed sources, said the film “isn’t intended to be a sanitized rendering” of Jackson’s life.
Jackson was tried and acquitted in 2005 on charges of molesting a 13-year-old boy. In 1994, he settled a sexual abuse civil lawsuit concerning another 13-year-old boy.
His reputation came under scrutiny again this year because of the Emmy-winning documentary “Leaving Neverland” in which two men gave emotional accounts of what they said were sexual abuse by the singer in the 1990s when they were boys.
Jackson’s family attacked the documentary and his estate denounced it as a “rehash of dated and discredited allegations.”
Despite the publicity, the Jackson estate is backing a new Broadway musical about the singer, due to open in July 2020. A Michael Jackson show “One” from Cirque du Soleil continues to play in Las Vegas, and stage musical “Thriller Live” has been playing in London since 2009. (Reuters)
