Director Dan Reed insists that Leaving Neverland was never about Michael Jackson.
“It was their story,” Reed explains over Zoom from London, referring to Wade Robson and James Safechuck. In his explosive 2019 documentary, the two accused the late pop icon of sexually abusing them as children.
A lot of people see it as a story about Michael Jackson, but it is literally the story of these two guys. And this film is just what happened next.
Reed is talking about Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson, his long-awaited follow-up, which premiered on Tuesday—airing on Channel 4 in the U.K. and streaming on YouTube in the U.S.—after six years. The 50-minute documentary, featuring exclusive access to court hearings, focuses on Robson and Safechuck’s legal battle as they sue Jackson’s companies, controlled by his estate, for failing to protect them from the alleged abuse.
Jackson denied the allegations throughout his life until his death in 2009, and his estate has continued to do the same. These accusations are not new—13-year-old Jordan Chandler first accused him in 1993, leading to a $23 million out-of-court settlement. In 2005, Jackson faced trial for child molestation and providing alcohol to a minor but was acquitted of all charges.
Robson, a well-known choreographer who has worked with NSYNC and Britney Spears, and Safechuck, an executive at a digital creative agency, both met Jackson as children and claim he engaged in separate sexual relationships with them. Although both initially testified that Jackson never abused them—Safechuck as a child during the 1993 investigation and Robson as a young adult in 2005—they later filed separate civil lawsuits against Jackson’s companies in 2013 and 2014.
After more than a decade of legal battles, a California appeals court ruled in 2023 that their combined case must go to trial, which is scheduled for next year. Reed told Variety that he plans to document the trial for the final installment of a Leaving Neverland trilogy. “It’s a bridge film in between what was a pretty high-profile start, and what I hope will be a very dramatic ending,” Reed says of Surviving Michael Jackson, which he began filming shortly after Leaving Neverland was widely released in March 2019.
HBO distributed Leaving Neverland in the U.S., but is notably not involved in its follow-up. Before the first documentary aired in 2019, the Jackson estate sued HBO for $100 million, arguing that it violated a 1992 non-disparagement clause linked to a concert film from Jackson’s Dangerous tour, which ultimately led to arbitration. Instead of returning to a major network, Leaving Neverland 2 will premiere on YouTube via Little Dot Studios’ Real Stories channel. When considering alternative streaming options, Reed says he asked himself,
What can we do that’s kind of different and exciting and makes this film available at the click of a mouse?
As Robson and Safechuck prepare for their upcoming trial, Lionsgate is also gearing up to release Michael, a Jackson biopic backed by his estate and set to hit theaters in October. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, the film stars Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson alongside Colman Domingo, Nia Long, and Miles Teller. It was expected to address the allegations against Jackson, but according to a January Puck report, reshoots were required after it was discovered that the estate had an agreement preventing Chandler’s story from being dramatized. “That’s a massive fuck up,” Reed says bluntly, claiming that an early version of the script he read portrayed Chandler as a “liar” and his family as “gold diggers.” A source close to the production, however, denies this and tells Variety that Reed’s take is “personal opinion,” adding, “the script never portrayed the Chandlers in the way Mr. Reed has opined.”
Representatives for HBO and Lionsgate declined to comment, while Jackson’s estate did not respond to Variety’s request for comment.
Source: Variety