It's the biopic the world's been waiting for.
Michael, the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic, is set to drop on April 24, 2026, and has already made history less than a week after its first trailer was revealed. The teaser pulled in more than 116 million views in 24 hours — making it the most-watched music biopic trailer ever. That stat tracks when you consider the scale of Michael's success, both in life and long after. Just this week, Thriller jumped back into Billboard's Hot 100 Top 10, making Jackson the first artist to have Top 10 hits in six different decades ('70s through the' 20s). The legend clearly hasn't clocked out.
With the teaser trending and MJ clips flooding X and TikTok, the discourse is already heating up with fans debating what needs to be addressed versus what the Jackson family might keep off-limits. But it's important to note that while most of the family supports the project, the Michael Jackson Estate — run by John Branca (portrayed by Miles Teller in the film) and John McClain — is the one actually producing it.
So far, the plot is under wraps, but reports say the film spans Jackson's entire life. Still, there are rumors that legal complications around revisiting the 1993 child-abuse allegations have split the project into two parts. That theory feels believable since the teaser only highlighted his childhood to the late 80s peak, leaving out everything post-Bad.
Until more details surface, one thing's clear: this film has a heavy lift. Michael Jackson's story is about race, genius, isolation, illness, and the price of building a global mythology. His struggle with vitiligo, the relentless fame machine, and his obsessive musical experimentation deserve more than a passing montage.
With glossy, sanitized biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody (which, fittingly, shares producer Graham King) setting the Hollywood template, Michael has to do better. It can't just re-crown the King of Pop. From the numbers, we know that's still his spot eternally. But it has to get the story of a Black icon of this magnitude right for once. The Jacksons: An American Dream remains the blueprint, but that was everyone's story. This one is Michael's, and for all our sakes, they can't afford to get it wrong.
Here are the 6 things the Michael Jackson biopic can't afford to get wrong.
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Joe Jackson's real impact on Michael
There's not much left to say about Joseph Jackson that hasn't already been said. The Jackson family patriarch remains one of the most complicated parental celebrity figures. Over the years, the family's tone toward him has shifted from justifying his methods as "that's how it was back then" to acknowledging the trauma that came with his aggression. But it was Michael who made Joe Jackson's mythology impossible to ignore. Through his 1993 Oprah interview and the heavily biased 2003 Martin Bashir documentary Living with Michael Jackson, Michael spoke openly about the emotional and physical abuse he endured growing up.
If you needed visual confirmation, The Jacksons: An American Dream etched Joseph's disciplinarian wrath into pop culture history. And Joseph never really denied it. In later years, he tried to make peace with his children (LaToya even asked if she could finally call him "Dad" on her reality show), but he often framed his behavior as survival parenting to keep his kids off the streets. Still, the psychological weight it placed on Michael never really left. He once said he'd get physically sick when Joseph walked into a room.
Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs' portrayal of Joseph became the archetype of the "stage dad" from hell. Now, it's Colman Domingo's turn to embody him. "I wanted to take it on because there are so many public opinions about Joe Jackson that conflict with what the family or people who knew him believe," Domingo said. "I want to figure him out. To find out what made him tick." Maybe that's the key. We already know what Joseph did, and we've seen the damage it left behind. But stage parents like him often birth brilliance through pain. If this biopic gets it right, maybe we'll finally understand the man who both traumatized and transformed the greatest entertainer.
Thriller's Crossover Domination and being the first modern global superstar
Thriller is the foundation for everything we now recognize as pop culture. What Michael, Quincy Jones, John Branca, and Epic Records built during that era became the DNA for modern stardom. You don't get Beyoncé's discipline, Taylor Swift's mythmaking, or Bad Bunny's global dominance without Thriller happening first.
But this is also the moment the Michael biopic absolutely cannot reduce to a montage. After Off the Wall was snubbed by the Grammys and Rolling Stone refused to give him a cover, he went back to the studio, determined to make something undeniable. The success of Thriller pushed him into a territory no Black artist had ever reached. MTV's refusal to give airtime to Black artists had already sparked public criticism, but when CBS president Walter Yetnikoff reportedly threatened to pull all his label's videos unless they aired "Billie Jean," MTV gave in.
In the mid-'80s, a 25-year-old Michael Jackson bought the Beatles' publishing catalog; a move that permanently fractured his friendship with Paul McCartney but solidified him as a businessman ahead of his time. A young Black artist owning the most valuable music in the world was unheard of. That's why this arc in the film matters. It's also the part of his story that's too often blurred by time, gossip, and myth.
Mentorship through Quincy Jones and their Dream Team
Everyone knows about the chemistry between Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. Their bond became the template for every great artist-producer partnership that came after, and it's the emotional backbone of the Michael teaser. Narrated by Quincy (played by Insecure's Kendrick Sampson), the teaser walks us through how the magic happened: Quincy guiding a young Michael through the creative process as he asks, "Lower the lights."
But what makes their partnership worth exploring isn't just the hits. When they first met during The Wiz, Michael was barely out of his teens, living in New York with LaToya, trying to figure out who he was outside the Jacksons. By Thriller, he was ambitious and laser-focused. By Bad, their relationship had shifted from mentor and student to equals. That kind of creative evolution breeds tension and brilliance. Behind Quincy and Michael were the often-overlooked architects of their sound. Rod Temperton, the quiet genius who wrote "Thriller," "Rock With You," and "Off the Wall." Bruce Swedien, the engineer who shaped Michael's sonic world from Off the Wall through Invincible. Greg Phillinganes, whose musicianship ran through every album in the trilogy.
We love to talk about creative genius like it exists in a vacuum, but Michael's brilliance was amplified by the people who helped him build it. If the biopic gets this right, it shouldn't just show Quincy and Michael's friendship; it should honor the entire ecosystem that turned that studio chemistry into pop history.
Plastic surgery, vitiligo, and the politics of Michael's physical appearance
One of the most important aspects the Michael biopic has to tackle is how society treated Michael's physical appearance. Plastic surgery is the obvious focus for most people, but for those who aren't diehard fans, the narrative stops at "he didn't like his Black features." What gets lost is nuance, context, and the cruelty of how the media shaped that perception. Michael was never obligated to explain his body to anyone.
Still, in his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk, he acknowledged two nose surgeries and a cleft added to his chin. But those admissions were drowned out by decades of speculation, as his looks were further altered. Even in 2025, people still don't realize he publicly confirmed his struggle with vitiligo in his 1993 Oprah interview.
In 1995, Entertainment Weekly ran a grotesque feature titled "5 Dynamic New Image Ideas for Michael Jackson," depicting him in Blackface with elephant tusks protruding from his face. It was mockery disguised as pop culture commentary, which unfortunately became a punchline for many years until his death.
If Michael wants to be more than a glossy retelling, director Antoine Fuqua has to confront this head-on. Even now, decades after his death, people are dissecting Jaafar Jackson's prosthetics in the teaser, arguing they're "too big" for the Off the Wall era.
The Pepsi Incident
The Pepsi burn incident was the beginning of Michael Jackson's slow downfall. When Michael suffered second and third-degree burns on his scalp and body while filming that 1984 Pepsi commercial, something in his life permanently shifted. That moment marked the start of his dependency on painkillers and the painful aches in his body that bothered him until his passing.
In Moonwalk, Michael recalled the accident with a mix of detachment and surreal calm. He said he was in shock but oddly fascinated by the ambulance ride because he'd always wanted to be in one. He never sued Pepsi; instead, he donated his $1.5 million settlement to the hospital that treated him. Decades later, when the raw footage surfaced in 2019, you could see the chaos, the confusion, and the split second Michael was burned.
The Pepsi accident is a turning point. After that day, his relationship with his father and brothers began to fracture further professionally, and his relationship with pain and painkillers began to define the rest of his life. If the Michael biopic really wants to tell his story with honesty, this is where it has to slow down. The glamour and choreography mean nothing if we don't understand the injury that started it all.
All the iconic moments
Let's be real. The re-creations are what everyone's waiting for. The teaser gave us quick flashes of Motown 25, the Victory and Bad tours, and those iconic videos for "Don't Stop' Til You Get Enough" and "Thriller." In every frame, Jaafar Jackson moves like his uncle, fully channeling him. The resemblance is uncanny, almost eerie, and that's precisely what's driving the hype.
From choreographers Rich and Tone to Colman Domingo, Miles Teller, and members of the Jackson family themselves, the production appears to be taking authenticity seriously. Still, that's an insane level of pressure. For decades, we've seen endless Michael impersonations — from tributes to parodies — to the point where imitation became spectacle. But this feels different. For the first time, Michael's story is getting the cinematic treatment it deserves. And it's with his own nephew playing him.
Watching Jaafar as a zombie in the red-and-black leather jacket, or gliding across the Motown 25 stage to "Billie Jean," is a cultural memory for those who lived through it and part of the DNA of modern pop. That's why the team behind Michael knows they can't afford to miss. They're recreating history.