Can the notorious Michael Jackson film continue the Hollywood biopic boom?

The answer, my friend, is probably blowing in the wind. But it still seems appropriate to consider the question: what is the current state of the rock’n’roll biopic? In the 2000s it seemed like taking on the role of an already beloved music star was a smart shortcut to awards recognition. Jamie Foxx bagged a Best Actor Oscar for his charismatic portrayal of soul man Ray Charles in 2004’s Ray while Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for playing June Carter Cash in 2005’s Walk The Line. (Her co-star Joaquin Phoenix was also nominated, though his gravelly performance as Johnny Cash was trumped by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s squeakier turn in Capote).

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These and other musician biopics often feel like they are assembled from a greatest hits grab-bag of cliches: childhood trauma, sudden fame leading to hedonistic excess, a fall from grace followed by an emphatic comeback. There will be lots of montages, most likely of screaming fans in hot pursuit of their idols. But perhaps that predictable cinematic groove should be seen as a feature, not a bug.

Which brings us to Michael, the long-in-the-works Michael Jackson biographical film looking to reframe the reputation of a generational talent whose complicated legacy has become knottier since his death in 2009. It says something of Jackson’s astonishing cultural impact that Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua, feels like the biggest – and potentially riskiest – music biopic in recent years.

That’s despite the fact that in 2024 alone we had movies about Amy Winehouse (Back To Black), Bob Marley (Bob Marley: One Love) and Bob Dylan (A Complete Unknown). Michael also follows 2025’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, a sombre biopic of The Boss that arguably limited its appeal by focusing intently on one fraught chapter of Springsteen’s pre-Born In The USA career.

One key issue with these biopics is that you need the cooperation of the artist’s estate to access the actual music. Compare the giddy rush of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022), a movie stuffed with Presley bangers, with Jimi: All Is By My Side (2014), a Hendrix movie starring Outkast’s André ‘3000’ Benjamin that wasn’t able to feature any actual Hendrix songs.

Working hand-in-glittery-glove with the Jackson estate means the Michael official soundtrack is a jukebox-ready playlist of MJ hits, from I Want You Back to Billie Jean.

Read more:

• A Complete Unknown director James Mangold on why Bob Dylan is proof you should always meet your heroes
• Pulp star Nick Banks explains how Jarvis Cocker incident with Michael Jackson changed everything
• Fab films: The best documentaries about The Beatles

The creeping sense of the film being an authorised, sanitised product that will minimise the more controversial aspects of Jackson’s career extends to the casting: the star is Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s 29-year-old nephew, who certainly looks and sound the part in the advance trailers. (The 11-year-old actor Juliano ValdI plays the younger Michael in his Jackson 5 days.)

Is it disingenuous for a biopic not to cover every aspect of its subject’s life? Certainly focusing on Jackson’s early struggles with his controlling father (played by Colman Domingo) and astonishingly rapid rise to global fame will make for a more feelgood experience.

Michael producer Graham Park shepherded 2018’s Queen smash Bohemian Rhapsody to Oscar success but – even more importantly in the industry’s eyes – set an astonishing new benchmark for a music biopic’s potential box office: it ended up making over $900m worldwide. That’s not quite Avatar numbers but it dwarves any other comparable film. (Second place would go to Luhrmann’s Elvis, with a shade under $300m.) If Park has ambitions to make the first billion-dollar biopic, the globally notorious Jackson and his back catalogue of bulletproof hits looks like the best bet.

Even if Michael falters at the box office and fails to recoup its shooting costs of $170m (a budget bumped up by reshoots refocusing the film on his rise to fame and imperial phase, according to reports in Variety) it won’t do much to disrupt the production line. The next big swing is a quartet of Beatles films directed by Sam Mendes, scheduled to release in 2028. Mendes has certainly recruited a hot young cast – with Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr – but four standalone films feels like a big ask, even for Beatles superfans. If we’ve learned anything, though, it’s that Hollywood won’t stop ’til it gets enough.

Michael is in cinemas from 22 April

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