Michael Jackson Biopic

[CyberpunkCentral]

The Graham King-produced Michael Jackson biopic project, which is being made with the blessing of the pop legend’s estate, is seeing its worldwide distribution rights snapped up by Lionsgate.

Deadline first told you about the project, penned by three-time Oscar nominee John Logan, back in November 2019. Michael still is moving forward with Logan’s script.

Oscar-winning The Departed producer King will produce with John Branca and John McClain, the co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate. King and Logan previously collaborated on Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Logan also wrote Ridley Scott’s Best Picture Oscar winner Gladiator.

Michael is set to be an in-depth portrayal of a complicated man who became the King of Pop. It will bring to life Jackson’s most iconic performances as it gives an informed insight into the entertainer’s artistic process and personal life.

Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chair Joe Drake said: “I am very excited that Lionsgate will be part of this epic film, and thrilled to be working with Graham, who has proven success in telling iconic life stories, from Bohemian Rhapsody to Ali; when combined with John, we couldn’t be in more extraordinary hands.”

Added King: “I first met the Jackson family in 1981 and I’m humbled to bring their legacy to the big screen. Sitting at Dodger Stadium watching the Victory Tour, I could never have imagined that nearly 38 years later I would get the privilege to be a part of this film.”

Said Katherine Jackson. “Ever since Michael was little, as a member of The Jackson 5, he loved the magic of cinema. As a family, we are honored to have our life story come alive on the big screen.”

Jackson is one of the biggest-selling artist of all time, with an estimated sales of 400 million records around the globe. He counts 13 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles, more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era, and was the first artist to have a top-10 single on that chart in five different decades. His honors include 15 Grammy wins, 6 Brit Awards, a Golden Globe and 39 Guinness World Records including Most Successful Entertainer of All Time. His inductions include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice), the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Dance Hall of Fame (the only recording artist to be inducted) and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame.

King’s cinematic canon counts 71 Oscar nominations. He received a Best Picture Oscar nomination for producing Bohemian Rhapsody, which minted $911M at the global box office and notched star Rami Malek an Oscar for his turn as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. King recently produced Sandra Bullock’s The Unforgivable, which became one of the top-viewed films on Netflix. His passion for telling real-life stories has resulted in several critically and commercially successful films, including Ali, Argo and The Aviator, among many others. He is currently developing the story of the Bee Gees for the big screen at Paramount.

In addition to his Oscar-nominated work, Logan’s other movies include Skyfall, Hugo, The Last Samurai, Any Given Sunday and Sweeney Todd. He won the Tony for his play Red and wrote the book for the Best Musical Tony winner Moulin Rouge. He is represented by CAA.

https://deadline.com/2022/02/michael...on-1234928021/

[BluBonnet]

[Warm Gun]

Hope it sparks new public interest and paves the way for new releases of his old videos and concerts.

[Jay H.]

Made with the blessing of his estate = sugar-coated propaganda fluff.

[lesco]

Going by that comprehensive synopsis, I'm guessing the biopic title will be "The Elephant in the Room".

[BluCollector13]

Given the other famous music biopic Graham King produced, if they cover the child abuse allegations, it'll probably say they wanted to get molested just like "BR" inferred Freddie Mercury deserved to get AIDS for his lifestyle.

[raptors661]

I'm guessing it won't even mention the allegations seeing that it had his estate's blessing.

[Stanis]

Yikes... i guess they wanna drive those album sales up

[RossyG]

CGI's so good nowadays they'll be able to de-age Macaulay Culkin for the sex scenes.

[EvaDK]

Originally Posted by Jay H.

Made with the blessing of his estate = sugar-coated propaganda fluff.

[Galactus123]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

Hope it sparks new public interest and paves the way for new releases of his old videos and concerts.

I hope so too. Would be great to see the music videos and Bad Tour on Blu-Ray.

[s2mikey]

Originally Posted by Jay H.

Made with the blessing of his estate = sugar-coated propaganda fluff.

Thats quite possible. Honestly, Ill just enjoy his older music and skip anything like this. I dont really care and as you said, this will be fudged as needed to be user-friendly.

[Monterey Jack]

I'd rather see an Across The Universe-style musical set in the 80s using nothing but Michael Jackson music, as any "biopic" is gonna totally omit the more questionable aspects of his life. The only reason musician biopics exist is to move the subject's music yet again.

[Guy87]

Just give me his music videos scanned in 4K then 'eff off.

[MechaFresh82]

Fun times!

https://www.youtube.com/supported_br...tube.com/watch

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by Galactus123

I hope so too. Would be great to see the music videos and Bad Tour on Blu-Ray.

I have the Bad tour (Wemberly) on DVD. It looks pretty bad. Obviously shot on video, so I don't know how much a Blu-ray could actually help.

But yeah, videos, please. Unbelievable that the supposed king and queen of pop have not had a single classic video released in HD, while plenty of other artists both smaller and bigger have. Well, MJ had Thriller released in 4K, but what good is that if it only played in cinemas for a short time?

[sandman slim]

But who could they possibly get to play Michael Jackson? I'm thinking Tilda Swinton...

[Galactus123]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

I have the Bad tour (Wemberly) on DVD. It looks pretty bad. Obviously shot on video, so I don't know how much a Blu-ray could actually help.

But yeah, videos, please. Unbelievable that the supposed king and queen of pop have not had a single classic video released in HD, while plenty of other artists both smaller and bigger have. Well, MJ had Thriller released in 4K, but what good is that if it only played in cinemas for a short time?

Actually some Bad Tour concerts were shot on film. Colorist Warren Eagles wrote about it on his blog some years ago. The page is now gone but here is what he wrote:

Grading Michael Jackson

My first real grading job was on the Michael Jackson Bad tour in 1988, directed by Patrick Kelly. I was an assistant telecine operator at Visions, located in Soho, London. As an assistant I laced the film, loaded the film cleaner and pressed REC on the 1” VTR. I spent the time in between these duties and lots of my own time observing and learning the nuances of the industry. Visions had 2 senior telecine ops Mark Baugh and Luke Rainey who were both particularly knowledgeable and were an invaluable part of my education. Just watching them grade then asking questions at the right moment was a great way to learn.

The concert was shot on a mixture of 35mm and 16mm film, it seemed at times they were shooting film for fun! The crew filmed 2 nights out of the 5 Wembley stadium gigs, film was also fed from the earlier tour legs in Australia, Japan, and Europe. As an accompanying piece to the concert, an “on the road” documentary was also filmed at the same time. The concert was cut in a 4 machine 1” online edit suit, not offlined. This was before Avid of FCP offline so the alternative would have been a lowband umatic or ¾ edit. As soon as the film came in from the lab we would be transferring it, feeding the footage on to 2 hungry edit suites.

It is still the biggest music project I have ever been involved with in terms of volume of footage. We would load each negative film lab roll onto the Rank MK111 telecine machine then set the counter to a known sync point on the film. So LR 10 would be TC 10:00:00:00. The sync point would be the start mark on the film leader.

There had been a hold up one day at the lab so the pressure was off and Mark said to me “why don’t you jump on the desk and grade a few rolls,” I jumped at it.

I played the film roll into the first song and checked our presets for color and framing. The colorists had set presets based on the different film stock types. Kodak 5248 slightly warmer than the 500ASA variety. I made some small adjustments all looked good and matched the previous work so I rewound the negative slowly to the film leader and then started to record from the Picture Start mark on the leader. To match a shot from a previous camera roll, we had to load that tape, find the shot we wanted to match to, then wipe to it with a vision mixer, no still store back then. The exposure and color balance were adjusted on the fly as the 1’’ VTR was recording. I initially couldn’t adjust the controls quickly enough so found that the exposure was changing during a usable piece of MJ’s performance. This meant we had to stop recording, adjust the shot then pick up the edit on a suitable camera flash or clapperboard. As I became more experienced I leant to change the controls fast enough to keep recording. This type of fly grading was a great way of learning instinctively which way to adjust the joysticks without looking at the Vector scope or Waveform monitor. The key here was consistence as there was to be no final grade. Fly grading is something junior graders don’t do much anymore because film dailies from a TK machine are becoming less frequent. Film is more likely to be transferred to a file then graded. It was a great way to learn how to grade, not just well but quickly.

The single “Another part of me” was cut from some of my early telecine work. The music video was cut from footage shot in London and Paris, that shows you how tight Jackson’s performance was. As far as I know the complete concert and documentary has never been released. A disappointing waste as the film managed to capture Jackson at his peak. Jackson never came into Visions during the project but Frank Dileo, his cigar smoking manager, visited a couple of times

[wonderer99]

Well as an alternative to sarcasm and cheap shots I would welcome this. Michael was one of the greatest performers ever with a catalogue of music that will last forever. This will be an entertaining couple of hours and will be great to hear his music on the big screen.

His accuser's have been proven to be liars numerous times and he has been found not guilty of wrongdoing. If you want to believe the money grabbing BS there are plenty of sensationalist documentaries available out there to watch. Why taint a mainstream biopic and an incredible career with all that garbage that has been put to rest numerous times?

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by Galactus123

Actually some Bad Tour concerts were shot on film. Colorist Warren Eagles wrote about it on his blog some years ago. The page is now gone but here is what he wrote:

And I'm stuck with this.



Damn it all to hell.