Tickets for “Michael,” the highly anticipated (and controversial) Michael Jackson biopic, are on sale now, ahead of the movie’s release on April 24. And along with that announcement comes one final trailer. Watch it below, but only if you wanna be startin’ somethin’.
Among the highlights of this trailer is a glimpse from a section recreating John Landis’ iconic “Thriller” music video (at the time considered the high point of the artform) and a computer-generated version of Bubbles, Jackson’s beloved pet chimp, which is giving off shades of the Robbie Williams biopic “Better Man.” (At one point Taika Waititi was working on a stop-motion animated feature called “Bubbles” that would have told Jackson’s story through the lens of the chimp; it was canceled after allegations resurfaced about Jackson in the 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland.”)
Otherwise, the final trailer for “Michael,” starring Jackson’s real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop, seems to deliver on the promise of earlier promotional materials – capturing key moments in the superstar’s young life (the movie concludes around the release of “Bad”), while sidestepping some of the thornier aspects of his personality and fame.
Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Miles Teller and Larenz Tate also star in the film, which is directed by Antoine Fuqua from a script by John Logan.
This version of “Michael” has been radically reworked, following a scrapped third act that required major revisions and additional photography, which not only inflated the budget (rumored to now hover around the $200 mark) but also bumped back the release date several times – first slated for April 2025, then October 2025 and now April 2026.
“Michael” moonwalks into theaters on April 24, 2026.
