The biopic for the King of Pop is doing huge business in its first week. The Michael Jackson film made over $200 million globally after its first weekend and as the movie ends at the close of one chapter of his life, it stands to reason that Lionsgate and Universal will likely sort out the legal details in order to explore all the controversies that followed Jackson in the 90s in another film. It was revealed that Michael went through extensive reshoots that replaced some of the scenes that started to explore allegations placed on Jackson.
Deadline recently caught up with Michael director Antoine Fuqua, where he gave some insight into making the film. Fuqua revealed that he spoke with Jackson back in the 90s, very briefly, when he was considered to direct the “Remember the Time” music video. Ironically, the original cut of Michael ended around that era. When asked how much of Michael’s life they filmed initially, Fuqua revealed,
We went pretty far. We went through the Jordan allegations we couldn’t use. We went farther than that. Maybe a year or two after that (1995) when things turned against Michael.”sponsored content
Fuqua was asked about the reshoots and how long it took the screenwriter, John Logan, to write and rewrite the end of the film. The director answered, “I can’t remember the exact amount. We were writing while we were shooting. As we were shooting, we were discovering things. We had the structure down. Once we had that, Graham and I would go through that, then we’d sit with John. It was a lot of digging and going back at scenes we had before.”
While it definitely feels that the studios want to continue the story, Fuqua was asked about the jettisoned footage. He was asked if the third of footage that had to get cut out could be used in a potential sequel, he simply responded, “Absolutely.” When asked if he would be directing the sequel, Fuqua replied, “I would like to, it’s just about scheduling. It would kill me if somebody else did it.”