Yes, this just happened — to big cheers.
Producer Graham King showed up to close Lionsgate CinemaCon session in a big way Wednesday showing off an emotional first trailer for the Michael Jackson biopic Michael, the movie that hits theaters on April 18, 2025. Director Antoine Fuqua is still shooting the movie, but a first-look clip was assembled.
King said, “I’m looking forward to giving to the audience a thrill like they’ve never seen before.”
He promised the film will cover Jackson’s career, his personal life, artistry and musical legacy. “It is a story worthy of a cinematic presentation,” King said. “For the first time, fans and generations of moviegoers will come together to get an inside look into the most prolific artist who ever lived.”
King said the filmmakers had tried to “find the untold version of the story.”
“Michael Jackson was an enigma, full of eccentricities and … talent,” he said. He was also “Simply a man who lived a very complicated life. The movie will get into all of it including over 30 songs spanning his career … His life on stage and his life out of the public eye.”
King also said this would be “a long feature film.”
The footage begins with scenes of screaming fans and cuts to Jackson as a little boy whose mother tells him, “There might be some people who think you’re different and that’s going to make life a little harder for you, but you never were like anyone else.”
In voice-over, a grown-up Jackson says of performing, “It transports your entire being, that’s what I want the world to feel like — magic.”
Some of the footage shown to the exhibitor crowd today at the Caesars Colosseum appears to take place during the Off the Wall era as well as that of Bad — “Man in the Mirror” is a key song heard throughout. We also see the pop singer’s nephew Jaafar Jackson as his uncle performing onstage. At one point, his voice-over says, “When I’m not on stage, everything feels foreign to me.”
A voice-over from what appears to be Katherine Jackson adds: “You have a very special light, so let the light shine into the world.”
The pic shows it all — from Jackson’s childhood days in snowy Gary, Indiana, to the Jackson 5 performing and the King of Pop being mobbed by fans while sitting in his limo.