The trailer for Michael, the biopic about Michael Jackson’s life, just dropped.
The new film from director Antoine Fuqua stars Jackson’s real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, as the late music icon, chronicling his life from his challenging childhood to adult superstardom.
The trailer opens with the King of Pop hyping himself up before a stadium show, as thousands of people cheer his name from the crowd. “You are confident. You are strong. You’re beautiful. You’re the greatest of all time,” he tells himself.
The trailer then cuts to shots of Michael as a boy, singing with his brothers in the Jackson 5, as his father, Joe Jackson (Coleman Domingo), gives them some blunt talk at the dining room table: “In this life, you’re either a winner or a loser,” Joe says. “Y’all want to work in the steel mill for the rest of your days? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t. Y’all willing to fight for it?” The kids assure him they do with a loud, “Yes sir!”
But as Michael grows up and becomes the star of the group, it’s clear that he’s less than happy with life in the Jackson 5 — and with his father’s strict rule over his career. “I love my family,” he says at one point. “But I just want to do my own thing. I just have all these ideas in my head. I just gotta get them out.”
Those ideas, of course, are some of the most popular songs in American history, including “Billie Jean” and “Thriller.” And while the trailer reveals the highs of Michael’s thriving solo career — from his famous music videos to his friendship with a pet monkey — it also hints at some of his struggles along the way. In one shot, Michael is rolled out of an ambulance on a stretcher wearing his silver sequined glove — a scene potentially portraying the 1984 incident in which his hair caught fire while filming a Pepsi commercial.
The trailer, however, does not hint at the most notable controversy around Jackson even after his 2009 death: allegations of sexual abuse involving minors, which first began in 1989. Jackson was acquitted of child molestation charges in 2005. He had denied all charges and his estate continues to deny the allegations, calling ongoing civil suits “extortion.”
That does not mean the film will ignore the allegations. The third act of the film reportedly had to be reshot because it included a depiction of a Jackson accuser who had previously received legal guarantees that he wouldn’t appear in a dramatized version of Jackson’s life, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
In September 2025, Jackson’s 27-year-old daughter Paris Jackson said on Instagram that she does not support the film — correcting Domingo’s comments to People, in which the actor stated otherwise. She called the movie a “sugar-coated” version of her father’s life that includes inaccuracies and “full-blown lies.”
“They’re going to make whatever they’re going to make. A big reason why I haven’t said anything up until this point is because I know a lot of you guys are gonna be happy with it,” she wrote at the time. “A big section of the film panders to a very specific section of my dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy, and they’re gonna be happy with it.”
Michael hits theaters April 24.