Jaafar Jackson has known since childhood that one question would follow him everywhere once the film was released: does he look like his uncle? The short answer, visible in every frame of Antoine Fuqua's "Michael," is yes. The longer answer — whether a physical resemblance translates into a performance that can carry a two-and-a-half-hour studio film about one of the most scrutinised artists of the 20th century — is what American audiences will begin answering when the film opens nationally on 24 April 2026.
The movie premiered at the Berlinale on 10 April 2026 to a standing ovation that lasted three minutes and forty seconds, timed by reporters in the Berlinale Palast. Director Antoine Fuqua, who spent four years developing the project before cameras rolled, called the Berlin reaction "the moment I stopped being afraid." Written by John Logan, the screenplay follows Jackson's life from his earliest years in Gary, Indiana, through the Jackson 5's 1960s Motown recordings and into the beginning of his solo career. It does not cover the 1993 or 2003 sexual abuse allegations in detail, a decision that Fuqua and Lionsgate have defended publicly and that critics have already identified as the film's most contentious structural choice.
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