Film studio Lionsgate is banking on making $700 million (KSh. 90.4B) in global box office receipts for the feature-length \u201cMichael,\u201d which has its world premiere in Berlin on Friday.<\/p>\n
That figure would far surpass other productions in the same genre except for the Freddie Mercury-inspired \u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d which took in $910 million (KSh. 117.6B).<\/p>\n
\u201cMichael\u201d is just the latest instalment of a flourishing economic empire in Jackson\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
\u201cMJ: The Musical\u201d opened on Broadway in 2022 and has been staged in other countries, while the Cirque du Soleil production \u201cMichael Jackson ONE\u201d has been running in Las Vegas since 2013.<\/p>\n
Mychael Darklighter, a fan who lives in Australia, said he has twice seen the musical and recalled a consistently enthusiastic audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cA crowd of all ages was going nuts for it each time I attended,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last year, for the thirteenth time since his death in 2009, Jackson topped the Forbes list of deceased celebrities generating the most revenue.<\/p>\n
And on Spotify, the artist has more monthly listeners than Beyonce, Post Malone, or Olivia Dean, major figures in contemporary pop.<\/p>\n
Vincent Amen, a former advisor to Jackson, said he believes the new film will boost that clout even further.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the fan base, I think that they\u2019re putting themselves on the right path to commercial success,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Baby over balcony<\/strong><\/p>\n Kimberly Krautter, of the public relations firm K-Factor Strategies, said that Jackson\u2019s business is more profitable after his death as it is \u201cless fraught with controversy.\u201d<\/p>\n She pointed to several PR missteps Jackson made, including the moment in 2002 when he famously dangled his baby over a hotel balcony ledge in Berlin while waving to fans gathered below.<\/p>\n Amen agreed that the positive attention during the singer\u2019s career was regularly offset by contentious moments.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever publicity he had that was positive sometimes was countered with Michael\u2019s mistakes as negative publicity, and that made it very difficult to do business with him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Another example was in the 2003 documentary \u201cLiving with Michael Jackson,\u201d where the star explained that he still invited children to sleep in his bed, even though he was already the subject of child sexual abuse allegations.<\/p>\n \u2018Destroy his character\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite his 2005 acquittal in a criminal trial for child molestation, Jackson never managed to restore his image while alive.<\/p>\n Other alleged victims filed civil lawsuits after his death, and several proceedings are ongoing. The artist has never been convicted in criminal or civil court.<\/p>\n According to several media outlets, none of these episodes appear in the biopic, which was produced under the supervision of the Jackson family.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love that the film would tell the most human story about Michael Jackson possible,\u201d said Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I also realise that we\u2019re in a period of time where Hollywood does not deal with celebrities in that way,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n For Krautter, Jackson\u2019s image has been relatively spared because he died before the MeToo movement, which notably brought down singer R. Kelly over child sexual abuse.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the fan Darklighter remains convinced that Jackson did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cI think his legacy is pretty secure, all things considered. No matter how much they try to destroy his character,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The post Michael Jackson still king as biopic drops globally Friday<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Film studio Lionsgate is banking on making $700 million (KSh. 90.4B) in global box office receipts for the feature-length \u201cMichael,\u201d which has its world premiere in Berlin on Friday. That figure would far surpass other productions in the same genre except for the Freddie Mercury-inspired \u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d which took in $910 million (KSh. 117.6B). \u201cMichael\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}