(August 8, 2026) – The billion-dollar grossing biopic Michael starring newcomer Jaafar Jackson playing his uncle was an unqualified success. It exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations, including those of its production studio Lionsgate, whose early projections likely didn’t have the film grossing a 10-digit figure.
So it’s natural that the studio has green-lit the sequel, which will no doubt pick up where the first movie left off — in 1988 as Michael Jackson was completing his Bad tour.
Per an article in Complex, which cited Deadline as its source, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chairman Adam Fogelson said during the studio’s latest earnings call this week that the company aims to get cameras rolling “toward the end of this year or early next year” with Part 2 being released as early as “late 2027 or the first half of 2028.”
With plenty of footage (including “big musical sequences”) left on the cutting room floor due to the last minute reshoot for Part 1’s ending, the studio claims to have the advantage of having enough material to make for a quicker production for Part 2. But it’s not clear — at least to this Jackson fan — whether they’ve cleared the hurdles that made altering the ending to Part 1 necessary. Those same hurdles were seemingly why there had to be a Part 2.
For starters, Jackson’s legal woes from accusations of sexual misconduct were reportedly the basis for a settlement clause preventing him from depicting his accuser(s) in any film. Given that the allegations were a major part of the timeframe that would presumably be covered in Part 2, it’s not intuitively clear how Jackson’s estate would navigate any related legal restrictions to tell the rest of Michael’s story.
Then there’s the issue of Janet Jackson. By now, everyone knows that Michael’s baby sister opted out of being portrayed in the first movie for reasons unknown. That meant there was zero mention of her name (or that of Jackson siblings Rebbie and Randy) or the fact that she even existed. Part 2 would pick up during the time that Janet was becoming a huge superstar in her own right, one whose albums and singles were beginning to outsell her brother’s (at least domestically), and one whose career intersected with Michael’s in a big way when the two recorded their first-ever duet, “Scream,” from Michael’s 1995 HIStory album.
“Scream” wasn’t merely one of Michael’s biggest musical moments of his final 15 years; it was perhaps the most visible intersection of the two most successful Jackson siblings’ adult careers. Pretending Janet didn’t exist becomes much harder when she’s literally singing and dancing right beside him.
Janet would have to have a serious change of heart to allow its depiction in the film, and it’s not evident that this has happened. A billion-dollar first film certainly gives Lionsgate and the estate more incentive — and resources — to try to bring Janet aboard. But if her holdout is rooted in principle rather than compensation, box-office success may not solve anything.
Then there are Michael’s three children — Prince, Paris and Bigi (“Blanket”) — and the question isn’t necessarily whether Lionsgate can tell their father’s later story without their blessing. It’s what it means if it does. Paris and Bigi were conspicuously absent from the executive producer credits for the first film. A movie sanctioned by the Michael Jackson estate depicting Michael’s fatherhood while two of his three children conspicuously decline to endorse it creates its own awkwardness.
Related Reading: Michael Review — It’s Possible to be Entertained and Disappointed at the Same Time
And then there’s the music itself.
Most of Michael’s biggest and most compelling musical moments came during the first 30 years of his life, as vividly told in Part 1. If the story picks up where it left off, there’d be no Off the Wall, no Thriller, and no Bad (although the singles and videos from that last album — especially “Smooth Criminal” — would make a thrilling starting point for the sequel). That album trilogy and the iconic performances they sparked were easily some of the first movie’s biggest draws.
By 1991, the King of Pop had parted ways with longtime producer Quincy Jones. His remaining albums — Dangerous, HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book 1, and Invincible — were helmed by an assortment of the day’s hottest producers, including Teddy Riley, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Babyface, R. Kelly, and Rodney Jerkins. Still, the biggest moments that came out of those sessions — singles and videos like “Black or White,” “Remember the Time,” “In the Closet,” “You Rock My World,” “You Are Not Alone,” and the aforementioned “Scream” (with Janet) — wouldn’t on first glance appear to be the seat-fillers that career-shifting hits like “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Rock With You,” “Beat It,” “Bad,” “Billie Jean,” “Thriller” and all the Jackson 5 early hits were.
That isn’t remotely an even division of Michael Jackson’s musical mythology. Part 1 got Motown Michael, the moonwalk, Off the Wall, Thriller, “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” Bad. Part 2 gets some excellent music and spectacular performances, but increasingly the story surrounding the music became bigger than the music itself.
During the ‘90s and beyond, much of the world had taken more interest in tabloid stories about Jackson’s personal life and his appearance than his musical career. Even that music, which post-Dangerous began to take on a darker tone (“Scream,” “They Don’t Care About Us,” “This Time Around,” “Ghost,” “Is It Scary,” “Morphine,” “Threatened”), acknowledged this notion. By 1995, Michael Jackson’s music increasingly wasn’t providing an escape from the Michael Jackson story. It was indulging it.
Perhaps that’s what the sequel will lean into the most — the public’s never ending desire for salacious content about their favorite celebrities. Sure, there were some thrilling late-career musical moments by MJ, including the historic 1993 Super Bowl halftime show, and the unforgettable performance of “Dangerous” at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards. Those were reminders of Jackson’s otherworldly talent (and it’s possible that those were already recreated for the first film). But were they enough to overshadow the drama that accompanied him for the last two decades of his life?
That question will likely drive Michael Part 2, covering the portion of his life where MJ married Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie, endured humiliating personal investigations and went on to describe them in lurid detail, and dealt with addiction issues, including one that ultimately cost him his life.
Which raises the most glaring question: how will the estate allow the producers to handle Michael’s demise? The first movie was clearly an attempt to rebrand Jackson’s musical legacy for a generation of fans who largely had social media memes and Wikipedia as their historical sources. Will the estate allow an honest, deeper dive into the uncomfortable events that led to his death? And are there additional legal risks of depicting the doctor who ultimately served time for supplying Jackson the drugs that ended his life?
The fact is that there is almost too much ground for Michael Part 2 to cover. And the record-shattering success of the first film proved that, nearly two decades after his death, there remains enormous demand for Michael Jackson’s story for new generations of fans who didn’t get to experience it real time.
But there were arguably two things driving audiences into theaters the first time: the music and the drama — in that order. The fact that Thriller has remained lodged in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 since Michael opened suggests the appetite for the music hasn’t diminished.
Part 2, where Jackson’s demons ultimately catch up with him, reverses that equation.
There will still be plenty of music — “Black or White,” “Remember the Time,” “You Are Not Alone,” “They Don’t Care About Us,” perhaps “Scream” — and spectacular moments like the 1993 Super Bowl and 1995 VMAs to recreate. But there is no second Thriller waiting in the wings. Instead, the drama increasingly becomes the story.
And therein lies perhaps the sequel’s biggest hurdle: the more honestly it depicts the events that made Michael Jackson’s final two decades so fascinating to the public, the more uncomfortable an estate-authorized movie could become. But the more it avoids them, the less complete — and credible — Michael’s story becomes.
Getting Michael Part 2 into theaters may be the easy part.
Figuring out which Michael Jackson story they’re actually allowed — and willing — to tell is another matter entirely.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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