Thousands of Michael Jackson fans descended on Berlin on Friday for the premiere of a new biopic about the “King of Pop”, undeterred by child sex abuse allegations that continue to haunt the star.<\/p>\n
“Michael”, in which the singer is portrayed by his nephew Jaafar Jackson, is expected to be one of the highest-grossing films of its kind in history.<\/p>\n
In the queue for the screening, Andy Escobar, a 31-year-old aircraft mechanic from the United States, said his nickname at school was MJ — “because everybody knew that I was a Michael Jackson fan”.<\/p>\n
Asked about the child abuse allegations, Escobar said simply: “We know that’s not true.”<\/p>\n
“He was found not guilty,” added Megane Kittler, a 31-year-old educator from France who lives in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Only around 4,000 fans will actually be able to watch the film on Friday evening, two weeks before its official release, after being allocated seats via prize draws.<\/p>\n
For the rest, there will be Michael Jackson-themed activities throughout the weekend including panel discussions with the film crew, an exhibition dedicated to the singer and themed parties.<\/p>\n
Jackson, who died aged 50 in 2009 from an overdose of propofol, faced multiple allegations of child sex abuse during his lifetime.<\/p>\n
– Release pushed back –<\/p>\n
Despite his 2005 acquittal in a criminal trial for child molestation, the star never managed to restore his image while alive.<\/p>\n
Other alleged victims filed civil lawsuits after his death and several proceedings are ongoing. The artist has never been convicted in a criminal or civil court.<\/p>\n
“Michael” was originally intended to explore the impact of the allegations on the star, according to industry magazine Variety, citing unnamed sources “with knowledge of the production”.<\/p>\n
However, a third of the film was cut after lawyers for the Jackson estate realised there was a clause in a settlement with one of the singer’s accusers that barred any mention of him in a film, the magazine said.<\/p>\n
As a result, large parts of the film had to be rewritten and the release — originally scheduled for April 18, 2025 — was pushed back.<\/p>\n
Film studio Lionsgate is banking on making $700 million in global box office receipts for the feature-length film.<\/p>\n
That figure would far surpass other productions in the same genre except for the Freddie Mercury-inspired “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which took in $910 million.<\/p>\n
clp-fec\/gil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of Michael Jackson fans descended on Berlin on Friday for the premiere of a new biopic about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[32596,112,8366,32597,190,31681,10822,23988,12257],"class_list":{"0":"post-59185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-andy-escobar","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-child-abuse-allegations","11":"tag-child-sex-abuse","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-jaafar-jackson","14":"tag-john-macdougall","15":"tag-michael-jackson","16":"tag-world-premiere"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116382416577016113","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}