Mark Binelli

He made the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, a few years earlier, which had been a huge, massive hit, grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide.

And music biopics, if they work properly, they bind the music to a feel-good story, a triumphant story.

Where the audience can enjoy these songs they love at sort of maximum volume with fantastic visuals, but they can also feel connected to the artist as a person, as a sort of character in a movie.

Think of, you know, every recent biopic you can think of from Ray to A Complete Unknown, the Dylan biopic, to Elvis, to Bohemian Rhapsody.

And when those work, they really work.

The wild thing about this strategy, I got hold of a copy of the original script for the biopic.

And it wasn't just Jackson denying the accusations.

It went much, much further than that into, you know, what I found to be morally questionable.

territory.

It presented the accuser's father as an extortionist and a grifter.

It fully exonerated Jackson by presenting very contested evidence as if it was fact.

And you can see some of the script, the past script in the current film, which goes out of its way to present Jackson as this very innocent man-child with no friends.

And his love of children is...

completely innocent and a beautiful thing in the telling of this version of the movie.

He's visiting them in hospitals and things like that.

And that script I saw, the Branca character seeing all these kids visiting Neverland says something like, you know, I'm not worried about them.

I'm worried about the parents.

There are lots of greedy people out there.

Very much so.

And specifically naming the Chandler family, the family of this 1993 accuser.