The Michael Jackson biopic has continued to surge in sales in spite of its poor critical reception, with its impact looking to spread into the UK Album Charts.
Released on Tuesday (21 April), Antoine Fuqua’s Michael – which sees the King of Pop’s nephew Jafaar playing Jackson – made $217m (£160m) in the global box office in its opening weekend.
And the film’s impact is being felt in the music charts too, with a number of Jackson’s records predicted to land in the Top 40 in the upcoming album chart.
In Monday (27 April) evening’s chart update, Michael: Songs From The Motion Picture is in fourth place position. Jackson’s 2003 compilation album Number Ones is at No 7 in the charts, while 1982’s Thriller is at 18 and 1987’s Bad is at 22.
The week’s chart will be officially announced on Friday (1 May); in last week’s chart, Jackson’s 2005 compilation record The Essential took the No 5 spot.
Despite being torn apart by critics, Michael has become a box office smash, and even set a new record for music biopics during its opening weekend.
Yet the film, which depicts the early portion of Jackson’s life and career, has faced criticism for refusing to reference the child abuse allegations that Jackson faced.
This wasn’t always the plan. Early press releases claimed that Michael would show the late singer’s “human side and personal struggles” as well as his “undeniable creative genius”. The film was believed to open in 1993, when Jackson faced his first accusations of child sex abuse (Jackson denied all the claims made against him in his lifetime).
Yet earlier in April, a Variety report emerged claiming that the film had undergone 22 days of costly reshoots last summer so that all allegations of child molestation against Jackson were cut. Rather than the final act showing the impact of this scandal on Jackson’s life, the film now ends with Jackson at the height of his fame during the Bad tour.
This change to the film’s narrative reportedly is said to have occurred after attorneys for the Jackson estate located a clause in a settlement with Jordan Chandler, one of Jackson’s accusers in 1993, that said he could not be depicted or mentioned in any film.
In a one-star review of Michael, The Independent’s critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “The draw of Michael, Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King’s turn at the life of the King of Pop, isn’t the desire to understand Jackson as a person or as an artist, or to grapple with the weight of his legacy as one of the most pivotal cultural figures of the 20th century.
“It exists to be consumed as an act of allegiance, as proof of fandom. It resists story in favour of content, in making sure fans see what they expect to see, whether that be the ‘Thriller’ video or ‘Bad’ performed live at Wembley in 1988.”
But Colman Domingo, who plays Jackson family patriarch Joe in the film, defended Michael from claims that it “whitewashed” part of Jackson’s legacy.
Arguing out that the film depicts Jackson’s life from the 1960s to 1988, Domingo said: “We centre it on the makings of Michael. It’s an intimate portrait of who Michael is.”
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