Cruz Beckham dressed up as Michael Jackson to watch the late singer’s biopic Michael - amid significant backlash to the film.
The youngest Beckham son, 21, wore a red leather jacket similar to Jackson’s outfit from his 1982 Thriller video, as he headed to the cinema on Monday.
He performed some Jackson-inspired dance moves with his friend outside the venue and took part in a playful TikTok with his girlfriend Jackie Apostel, 30.
Beckham also shared a selfie in his costume on his Instagram Story and asked: “Can anybody tell which movie we're gonna watch?”
Jackson, who died in 2009 at age 50, is portrayed by his 29-year-old nephew Jaafar Jackson in the Antoine Fuqua-directed film Michael.
It traces Jackson’s upbringing and rise to fame from his time in The Jackson 5 to his superstardom in the 1980s.
Critics have pointed out that Michael includes no reference to the child sex abuse allegations Jackson faced beginning in 1993, which the late singer and his estate have always denied.
The film originally included scenes of investigators arriving at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in 1993 to search for evidence after allegations of child sexual abuse were made, sources close to production claimed to Variety earlier this month.
A LionsGate spokesperson told NBC News that scenes addressing the accusations were cut from the movie due to legal concerns.
The cast and crew reportedly filmed a new third act of the film, meaning its release was delayed by a year.
Actors Colman Domingo and Nia Long, who portray Jackson’s parents Joe and Katherine Jackson in the film, were asked about accusations that the film leaves out negative aspects of Jackson’s life.
“The film takes place from the ‘60s to 1988, so it does not go into the first allegations,” Domingo said during an appearance on the Today show earlier this month.
“So basically we centre it on the makings of Michael, so it’s an intimate portrait of who Michael is.”
Meanwhile, as Michael was being released, four adult siblings of the Cascio family spoke about a lawsuit they filed in February alleging that Jackson, who was a family friend, sexually abused them when they were children.
Edward, Dominic, Marie-Nicole and Aldo Cascio alleged to The New York Times that they were “drugged, raped and sexually assaulted” in various locations and countries over the course of more than a decade, beginning when some of them were as young as seven or eight, according to the lawsuit.
A fifth sibling alleged that he was abused as well but could not join the lawsuit due to legal reasons.
The siblings said they were “deprogrammed” by watching the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland and realized “Jackson’s abuse was wrong and had severely damaged them,” the lawsuit stated.
Three of the five children had said in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey that Jackson had “never” sexually abused them. They told The New York Times that their previous statement was a lie.
The Jackson estate and the Cascio family both acknowledged a compensation agreement was made after Leaving Neverland came out.
“The Estate prepared a purported life rights agreement that provided for five years of compensation. The Cascios were never given a copy of the agreement and were deprived of any opportunity to have a lawyer advise them,” the Cascios’ lawyers said.
Jackson’s estate said it “reluctantly paid the Cascios $2.8 million each over five years to protect Michael’s family as well as future projects important to Michael’s legacy and fans” and that the lawsuit is a “a desperate money grab” by the Cascio family.
“The family staunchly defended Michael Jackson for more than 25 years, attesting to his innocence of inappropriate conduct,” the statement said.
“This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael’s estate and companies.”
@jackieapostel @Cruz Beckham @Harry Crawford
♬ Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson
The statement also pointed to the Cascios’ interview with Winfrey saying Jackson never abused them.
Last year Jackson's daughter Paris Jackson, 28, distanced herself from his biopic and called out Domingo’s claims that she was “very much in support” of the film.
“[Colman Domingo], don’t be telling people I was ‘helpful’ on the set of a movie I had 0% involvement in lol that is so weird,” she wrote on her Instagram Story.
She added in a follow-up post: “I read one of the first drafts of the script and gave my notes about what was dishonest / didn’t sit right with me, and when they didn’t address it, I moved on with my life.”
However, her brothers Blanket, 24, and Prince, 29, showed their support by attending its Berlin premiere earlier this month.
