Can a Biopic Contain Michael Jackson—Or Will It Break Trying?

The glove glimmers. The lights dim. And somewhere between moonwalks and lawsuits, a camera begins to roll. But whose Michael Jackson will it show?

Rumors swirl that the upcoming biopic, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jackson’s real-life nephew Jaafar, will stretch across two films—an ambitious, maybe audacious choice. Because the question isn’t just whether Michael’s life can be told. It’s whether Hollywood is brave enough to tell the whole thing.

A Star Too Bright, A Shadow Too Long

Michael wasn’t one person. He was a boy wonder, a tortured genius, a tabloid obsession, and a cultural myth. To make a single film about him is already a risk. To make two is a provocation. What story are they really telling? One that dances through triumph? Or one that tiptoes around tragedy?

The early footage—hushed, glossy, reverent—feels designed to comfort. Jaafar Jackson looks eerily like his uncle. He moves with the same studied grace. But mimicry isn’t storytelling. “We’re not just recreating,” Fuqua has said. “We’re honoring. We’re wrestling.” The word wrestling sticks. Because how do you honor someone who the world both worshipped and crucified?

The Myth and the Mirror

There’s no clean way to frame a figure like Jackson. His life was the original algorithm—wildly beloved, deeply divisive, and impossible to log off from. Every choice in the film—from which songs are included to which moments are avoided—will echo far beyond the screen. This isn’t just a movie. It’s a referendum.

Will they show the pressure that split his identity? The surgeries that carved a boy into a phantom? The bedroom allegations that have haunted his legacy, regardless of legal outcomes? Or will the film, like so many before it, choose spectacle over scrutiny?

The decision to tell Michael’s story in two parts suggests an epic. But maybe it also admits that one narrative could never be enough. Maybe it hints that Michael Jackson was never meant to be understood—only performed, again and again, each time slightly different, slightly further from the truth.

So now the world waits, again, for Michael to take the stage. Only this time, we’re not sure if we’re watching a tribute… or a trial.