“Michael” director Antoine Fuqua opened up for the first time about the movie’s dramatic reshoots in a new interview with The New Yorker. As Variety reported ahead of the biopic’s theatrical release, “Michael” was forced to spend up to $15 million on additional photography in order to overhaul the film’s structure.
The original movie started in 1993 with police raiding Michael Jackson‘s Neverland Ranch after he’s accused of sexually abusing 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. The film then flashed back to recount the superstar’s life story and build back up to the allegation and the Chandler family’s lawsuit, which Jackson ultimately settled for $23 million before the investigation was closed when the Chandler family stopped cooperating with prosecutors.
Nothing involving Jordan Chandler or his family’s allegations remain in the final movie. These scenes had to be removed after attorneys for the Jackson estate realized there was a clause in the settlement that blocked the depiction or mention of Chandler in any movie. Gone was the original opening depicting the police raid on Neverland Ranch, which Fuqua teased to The New Yorker by saying: “I shot [Michael] being stripped naked, treated like an animal, a monster.”
Per The New Yorker: “Fuqua is not convinced that Jackson did what he is accused of doing, despite the number of accusers (five) and the fact that Jackson publicly talked about sharing his bed with boys.”
Jackson faced 10 charges in 2005 related to the alleged abuse of another 13-year-old but was later acquitted on all counts. The 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland” then chronicled new allegations from two more of Jackson’s alleged victims.
“When I hear things about us — Black people in particular, especially in a certain position — there’s always pause,” Fuqua said, with The New Yorker noting the filmmaker “was skeptical of some of the accusers’ parents, particularly Chandler’s father, who was recorded threatening to insure that Jackson was ‘humiliated beyond belief.’”
While Fuqua stressed he didn’t know the truth behind the allegations made against Jackson over the years, he noted that “sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.”
Fuqua and his “Michael” cast and crew assembled last June to overhaul the movie over 22 days of reshoots, as Variety reported. Sources said the Jackson estate shouldered the bill of up to $15 million because its error necessitated the changes. The new version of “Michael” ends with the icon at the height of his career and centers the family tension between Jackson and his domineering father Joe as the dramatic throughline of the story.
“Michael” opens in theaters Friday from Lionsgate.
