The expected box office rise of Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic Michael this weekend—and the film’s noted unwillingness to tackle the years of sexual abuse allegations against the music superstar—has had a slightly bizarre halo effect this week, casting back attention on Dan Reed’s unsparing 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, almost in spite of itself. Earlier this week, we ran a piece about how Reed’s film—which includes detailed and extensive allegations from Wade Robson and James Safechuck that Jackson raped them multiple times when they were children—has been pulled from streaming and made essentially inaccessible. The same is not true, however, of Reed himself, who’s now given a fiery interview to The Hollywood Reporter this week in which he accuses Fuqua of hypocrisy, lays out why he believes Robson and Safechuck’s allegations, and states “what he learned” while making the movie (and its 2025 YouTube sequel) in the bluntest terms possible: “I learned Michael Jackson fucked little boys.”
Suffice it to say that Reed isn’t in the mood to pull punches these days, as he confirms, for instance, why Leaving Neverland isn’t available on streaming, saying it’s the outgrowth of a “patently ridiculous” interpretation of a non-disparagement clause in an old contract HBO signed with Jackson in the early ’90s. (Reed also notes that HBO’s license for the film expires in 2029, at which point he intends to shop it around in hopes of finding the film a new home.)
On the topic of Robson and Safechuck’s allegations (which are also at the core of an ongoing lawsuit against the Jackson estate), Reed laid out his journey in approaching the story: “I was skeptical at first, because Jackson’s so famous and there were so many rumors and so many versions of what could possibly have happened with these children floating around. When I approached Wade and James, I took great care to maintain a kind of skeptical distance from what they were telling me. But I found their accounts to be so detailed and layered and convincing. And I was able to corroborate a lot of what they said and also check out records, investigate the police investigation and read trial transcripts… So I began by being skeptical and I ended by being sure that what Wade and James had to say had great merit.”
As for Michael itself, the director is no less unequivocal. Responding to Fuqua’s recent attempts to downplay or discredit Jackson’s accusers in The New Yorker—”Sometimes people do some nasty things for some money”—Reed targeted the irony. “For Antoine Fuqua to accuse people of gold digging is kind of ironic,” he told THR. “It seems to me all the people involved in this movie are just making bank. How can you tell an authentic story about Michael Jackson without ever mentioning the fact that he was seriously accused of being a child molester? I just don’t really see it. If anyone’s making money, it’s Michael Jackson’s estate and the people who worked on this biographical picture.”
It is, to put none too fine a point on it, bleak stuff, especially when Reed begins to lay out what he thinks the fact that his film has been allowed to disappear, while Fuqua’s is getting the full-press treatment, actually says about where attitudes about these alleged abuses are at:
It says that people don’t care that he was a child molester. Literally, people just don’t care. None of the allegations in Leaving Neverland have been seriously challenged, right? But there was enough noise online from those simplistic debunking [videos] that people found it easy to give themselves permission to like Michael Jackson’s music again, if they ever stopped liking it. I think a lot of people just love his music and turn a deaf ear. And short of having actual video evidence of Michael Jackson engaged in sexual intercourse with a 7-year-old child, I don’t know what would be sufficient to change these people’s minds. I’m not trying to stop anyone from consuming his music. I’ve never advocated canceling Michael Jackson. Book burning is for the Middle Ages and the Taliban. I just think if you’re going to enjoy his music, let’s also consider the fact that he liked to have sex with children and see how that affects your enjoyment, in all honesty.
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