Why you can’t watch Leaving Neverland on HBO Max
Jackson died in 2009, having never been convicted of any crime. HBO aired Leaving Neverland in March 2019 despite a then-ongoing lawsuit by the Jackson estate. Earlier that year, the estate had argued in a letter to HBO that Reed’s film was “one-sided” and that the network was “being used as part of Robson’s and Safechuck’s legal strategy,” because the film’s subjects were in the process of appealing the dismissal of their respective lawsuits against the Jackson estate. The estate subsequently filed suit against HBO, arguing that airing the film would constitute a breach of the nondisparagement clause in a previous, unrelated agreement the network had signed with Jackson as part of the deal to broadcast Live in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour, a concert special which set ratings records for HBO back in 1992.
The ensuing legal battle would grind on until 2024, when both parties dismissed their cases and HBO removed Leaving Neverland from HBO Max, a move that Dan Reed told The Hollywood Reporter this week was (as was widely rumored at the time) part of a settlement with the Jackson estate. (A representative for HBO did not respond to queries regarding the settlement by press time, and the Jackson estate did not respond at all.) Reed went on to direct a sequel to Leaving Neverland, last year’s Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson, which is available to stream in its entirety on YouTube; he also told The Hollywood Reporter in that interview that HBO’s license on the original film expires in 2029 and that he intends to shop it around to other platforms once that happens.
What Leaving Neverland’s Impact, or Lack Thereof, Tells Us About Michael Jackson, “Cancellation,” and Ourselves
Leaving Neverland is a viscerally upsetting viewing experience that will likely ruin Michael Jackson for you if Michael Jackson has not already been in some other way ruined for you. But fans are still dressing up and dancing in the aisles at screenings of Michael, which opened today in theaters nationwide. I haven’t seen it, but I admit that I’m curious. Fuqua’s movie—a splashy reboot of Jackson’s legacy produced with the cooperation of the Jackson estate—will undoubtedly be in its own way a perfect object, a commentary on how little reality the idea of Michael Jackson can bear, as freeze-dried a vision of its subject as an abstract kitsch saint as Jeff Koons’s porcelain statue Michael Jackson and Bubbles. When Liberace died in 1987, Saturday Night Live cold-opened with Phil Hartman dressed as the famously flamboyant bachelor pianist, up in heaven, doing nothing but smiling and playing the piano. “If you thought the censors were gonna let us do any more than this,” Hartman says, “you’re crazy! You’re living in the ‘70s!” I assume Michael will be like this, only without anyone acknowledging that something isn’t being acknowledged.