Any doubts about whether Lionsgate would wind up making a sequel to its Michael Jackson biopic Michael presumably got sewn up about a week after Antoine Fuqua’s film hit theaters back in April, as it swiftly danced past a whole host of issues and criticisms about its sanitized take on Jackson’s life to become 2026’s second-biggest box office movie to date. Sure, the film’s closing title card declaration that “His story continues” could have just been left as an acknowledgement that Jackson’s life story, well, continued—not necessarily in ways especially fun for audiences to watch—but Variety reports today that Lionsgate is definitely still making some very loud noises about a follow-up film.
That’s per top executive Adam Fogelson, who was on an earnings call on Thursday in which he made it clear that the studio is still very interested in a Michael sequel. (Even if nothing is officially on the books with Fuqua or star Jaafar Jackson just yet.) Somewhat hilariously, Fogelson seemed to go to some lengths in the call to assure investors that a movie covering the latter part of Jackson’s life—i.e., everything after the Bad tour in 1988, which is where Fuqua’s movie ends—would still be “entertaining,” and not just in a train wreck sense. “I would say that there is a ton of incredibly entertaining Michael Jackson story, and much of the biggest and most popular parts of his music catalog that were not touched upon in the first film,” Fogelson told listeners. At the same time, there’s a definite suggestion that the executive is well aware that the deeper you get into Jackson’s chronology, the more depressing/allegation-filled/baby dangling things get—but, hey, that’s what non-traditional chronologies are for!
“We can go forwards and backwards in telling this story,” Fogelson noted of the hypothetical sequel’s timeline, saying that, “There are so many other events that happened, even in the time frame of the original movie, that weren’t touched upon.” Which is putting it mildly: Fuqua’s movie went back for fairly extensive/expensive reshoots not long before it was originally set to land in theaters, after producers realized that its efforts to cover some of the child molestation accusations against Jackson were in violation of a long-standing settlement his estate made with one of his accusers. Fogelson acknowledged that some of that cut footage could potentially be worked into portions of a sequel, saving costs—although it’s not entirely clear how, given the legal issues, or just how unvarnished his studio and Fuqua are willing to get with the darker aspects of Jackson’s legacy. “We think we’ve got 25 to 30 percent of a second movie already shot from the prior production activity,” Fogelson said in the call, “And so obviously that will have some [financial] benefit ultimately, but we’re going to make sure we make a big and satisfying movie for a global audience once again.” To be fair, movie audiences made it pretty obvious they were willing to smile a nice, success-filled story about Jackson’s life, to the tune of more than $700 million; it’s a much bigger question mark of how they’ll respond to the rest of his story.
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