Antoine Fuqua, the director of the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” said he is skeptical of the child sexual abuse allegations against the late pop star, even as the film hits theaters amid largely negative reviews and renewed debate over Jackson’s legacy.
In a New Yorker profile, Mr. Fuqua revealed he is not convinced by the multiple allegations of child molestation made against Jackson beginning in 1993.
“When I hear things about us — Black people in particular, especially in a certain position — there’s always pause,” he said. He also suggested financial motives may have played a role in some of the accusations, saying, “Sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.”
Mr. Fuqua said he initially planned to address the allegations in the film, originally shooting a sequence depicting Jackson’s 2003 arrest. “I shot [Michael] being stripped naked, treated like an animal, a monster,” he told the magazine.
Those scenes never made it into the final cut. Attorneys for the Jackson estate discovered that the $23 million settlement with accuser Jordan Chandler contained language prohibiting any depiction or mention of him in any movie, forcing the production to cut the film’s entire original opening, which began with police raiding Neverland Ranch in 1993. The reshoots cost up to $15 million and took 22 days last June to completely restructure the narrative.
Mr. Fuqua was particularly skeptical of Mr. Chandler’s father, Evan, who had been recorded threatening to ensure Jackson was “humiliated beyond belief.” Evan Chandler died by suicide in 2009, shortly after Jackson.
Jackson faced 10 charges in 2005 related to the alleged abuse of another 13-year-old but was acquitted on all counts. The 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” later chronicled new allegations from two additional accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck. Jackson’s estate has continuously denied all allegations.
The film has opened to a 34% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes as of Wednesday. Variety called it “an engrossing middle-of-the-road biopic” that avoids any reference to the child sexual abuse allegations that dogged Jackson starting in 1993, while Empire Magazine called it “a cynical moneymaking machine” that renders the King of Pop’s professional success as “entirely frictionless.”
“Michael” stars Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in the title role alongside Miles Teller and Colman Domingo.
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