“Leaving Neverland” director Dan Reed is planning on making a third installment to document the forthcoming trial of Michael Jackson accusers Wade Robson and James Safechuck against the late pop star’s companies.
Reed is already following up his bombshell 2019 docuseries — in which Robson and Safechuck alleged that Jackson sexually abused them as children — with a sequel, “Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson,” premiering March 18 on Channel 4 in the U.K. and on YouTube in the U.S.
The 50-minute “Surviving Michael Jackson” primarily focuses on Robson and Safechuck’s fight to have their day in court after suing Jackson’s companies, which are governed by his estate, for neglecting to protect them from the alleged abuse. Jackson consistently denied the allegations before his death in 2009, and his estate has continued to do so. After going back and forth in the legal system for a decade, in 2023 a California appeals court ruled that Robson and Safechuck’s combined case must go to trial, which is currently set for next year.
If all goes to plan, Reed tells Variety that he’ll be in the courtroom with his camera and a crew. “It’s taken an awful long time just to get to a trial date that looks as though it could actually happen,” Reed says, though he believes Jackson’s estate will “find a way to try and sideswipe this whole thing and make sure it never goes to court.”
“But who knows,” he continues. “Maybe justice will prevail and there’ll be a trial. And if there is a trial, I want to be there.”
However, even if Robson and Safechuck do get their day in court, it’s possible that cameras won’t be allowed in the room. “That’s a big question, will the judge allow filming?” Reed says. “And it’s really the judge’s discretion.”
For “Leaving Neverland 2,” Reed was granted permission to film inside Santa Monica Courthouse during several hearings. “I feel really fortunate that we were able to because it’s such a dry subject,” he adds. Indeed, the second installment mainly focuses on the legal ups and downs that led to Robson and Safechuck being granted a trial — but Reed felt it was important to have a chapter of the “Leaving Neverland” story that fills in the gaps.
“It’s a bridge film in between what was a pretty high-profile start and what I hope will be a very dramatic ending,” he says. “We could have kept it to include all this material and the trial. But I think the trial will be so dramatic, and you won’t have time for all the stuff in between.”
After “Leaving Neverland” premiered in 2019, it garnered critical acclaim and won an Emmy for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special, but drew vitriol from both Jackson’s estate and his fans. Jackson had been the subject of sexual abuse claims before, even going on trial in 2005 for allegations of child molestation and intoxicating a minor, of which he was acquitted. Since Jackson’s death in 2009, his family and estate have continued to assert his innocence. Representatives for Jackson’s estate did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment on this article.
Reed hopes that continuing to tell Robson and Safechuck’s story with “Surviving Michael Jackson” — and its eventual third installment — will help viewers to “realize that these are real people, with a real story, with real families who are doing this.”
“They’re not just a couple of people who popped up because they saw a pot of gold,” he says. “These are people who have really dedicated a decade, at least, of their lives to getting justice.”
From Variety US