‘Leaving Neverland’ director: Michael Jackson biopic ‘flips the truth’

The director of “Leaving Neverland” watched the new Michael Jackson biopic, and he didn’t hold back.

Dan Reed, whose 2019 HBO documentary featured Wade Robson and James Safechuck accusing Mr. Jackson of grooming and sexually abusing them as children, told Variety that Antoine Fuqua’s “Michael” fails to honestly portray the late singer or meaningfully grapple with his alleged conduct.

“The first part of Michael as a child, I could kind of buy that,” Mr. Reed said. “But as soon as we go to the adult Jackson, played by his nephew Jaafar, that burst my bubble. I thought, he’s a great dancer, but his performance is very wooden, and one of the reasons for that is he didn’t have much of a script to work with.”

Mr. Reed said the film reduces Mr. Jackson to a hollow spectacle with no psychological depth.

“He becomes this waxwork who performs these jukebox songs, but there’s zero insight into what makes Jackson tick,” he said. “He’s this asexual plastic action doll of a figure in the film. And of course, the issue of his relationship with children is completely distorted by the fact that they portray him as an eccentric, overgrown child, which we know is not the full story.”

The documentarian also offered a cultural explanation for why the biopic takes that approach.

“To the culture, Jackson is like a religion. So, what I’ve done is essentially blaspheme, and this biopic reinstates the myth,” he said. “As absurd as any religion, people have to believe in the miracle of Jackson being this asexual, pure being who only wished good for little children and helped them. They’ve given him the attributes of a deity.”

Mr. Reed also argued that “Michael” falls short as a counter-narrative to his documentary.

“The film just flips the truth on its head — black is white, white is black, and two and two make five — and none of the people who go and see the movie will ever question that, but it’s a movie that’s impossible to take seriously as a counter-narrative to ’Leaving Neverland,’” he said.

He also said he found scenes depicting Mr. Jackson alongside sick children in hospitals to be unsettling. “That made me feel really icky,” Mr. Reed said. “It suggests that Jackson’s engagement with children was entirely benign and motivated by nothing but philanthropy.”

The biopic, which stars Jaafar Jackson — the singer’s nephew — alongside Coleman Domingo, Nia Long and Miles Teller, has drawn mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, holding a 37% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 39 out of 100 on Metacritic. Audiences, however, turned out in force: the film grossed $217 million globally in its opening weekend, a record for a music biopic.

Mr. Jackson’s estate has denied all allegations of sexual abuse against the singer. The Jackson family also released a documentary, “Neverland Firsthand: Investigating the Michael Jackson Documentary,” to rebut the claims made by Mr. Robson and Mr. Safechuck. Mr. Reed released a follow-up film, “Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson,” in the United Kingdom in 2025; it is available on YouTube.