By Variety | Created at 2025-03-18 22:20:39 | Updated at 2025-03-20 19:45:22
1 day ago
For director Dan Reed, “Leaving Neverland” was never about Michael Jackson.
“It was their story,” Reed says over Zoom from London about Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who in his bombshell 2019 documentary alleged that Jackson, the iconic late pop star, had sexually abused 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 referring to “Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson,” his long-gestating follow-up that’s finally debuting on Tuesday — via Channel 4 in the U.K. and on YouTube in the U.S. — after six years. Featuring exclusive access to court hearings, the 50-minute documentary primarily focuses on Robson and Safechuck’s fight for justice 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. This is not the first time such claims have arisen against Jackson — he was first accused in 1993 by 13-year-old Jordan Chandler, and the case was settled out of court for $23 million. He then went on trial in 2005 for allegations of child molestation and intoxicating a minor, of which he was acquitted.
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 allege that he had separate sexual relationships with them. Though they had both initially testified that Jackson never molested them — Safechuck as a child during the 1993 investigation, and Robson as a young adult in 2005 — they eventually filed separate civil suits against Jackson’s companies in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
After struggling through the legal system for over 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. Reed told Variety that he plans to document that as well for the finale to 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 started filming soon after the wide release of “Leaving Neverland” in March 2019.
HBO distributed “Leaving Neverland” in the U.S., but is notably not on board for its second installment. Before the first doc aired in 2019, the Jackson estate sued HBO for $100 million for violating a 1992 non-disparagement clause tied to a concert film from his “Dangerous” tour, eventually forcing the network to go to arbitration. Instead, “Leaving Neverland 2” will debut on YouTube via Little Dot Studios’ Real Stories channel. Faced with trying to bring it to another streamer, 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?”
And as Robson and Safechuck prepare for their upcoming trial, there’s also Lionsgate’s Jackson biopic, “Michael,” which is backed by the estate and currently set to release in October. The Antoine Fuqua-directed movie, starring Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson alongside Colman Domingo, Nia Long and Miles Teller, was said to address the allegations against Jackson — but according to a January Puck report, reshoots were necessary after it was discovered that the estate had an agreement with Chandler that his story could not be dramatized. “That’s a massive fuck up,” Reed says bluntly, claiming that an early version of the script he read characterized Chandler as a “liar” and his family as “gold diggers.” However, a source close to production denies this, and tells Variety that characterization is Reed’s “personal opinion,” and that, “the script never portrayed the Chandlers in the way Mr. Reed has opined.”
Representatives for HBO and Lionsgate declined to comment, and Jackson’s estate did not respond to Variety‘s request for comment on this article.
Below, Reed dives deeper into his motivation behind making a second documentary, releasing it on YouTube instead of a streamer and his thoughts on the “Michael” biopic.
How did the second installment come about? Were you always planning on making one?
When I started “Leaving Neverland 1,” I didn’t even know if I wanted to make it until a good way into the interviews, because you obviously don’t blindly accept that these people have a genuine story. But I think the success of the film took us a bit by surprise. And then we realized — after all the press, and the huge amount of noise and criticism died down — that these guys were still kind of where they were before, trying to get their day in court. It’s an element of their story that we touched on in “Leaving Neverland,” but I thought it would be good to go behind-the-scenes a little bit and see what these guys are going through in their day-to-day lives just in order to be able to go to court. It’s taken 12 years for Wade to even get a court date.
Were Robson and Safechuck at all hesitant about making a second part?
No, because we’d been through quite a lot together. I obviously asked them, “Would it be OK for us to carry on filming?” At the time, I think their cases had been thrown out and they’d just been reinstated because the [statute of limitations] law in California changed. We didn’t really know whether they were going to be successful in getting their day in court, because clearly the Jackson lawyers were going to try and throw the cases out again. So we started production with Channel 4 and they kind of cash-flowed us through the early stages of filming, when it could all have been for nothing.
It did get to a point where we could have made a film even if the appeal court had not reversed the trial court’s decision, but it would have been a less satisfying film. I just felt I had a duty to show what happened next, because these are two young men in whom a lot of people are invested. But the legal complexities of it, that was the daunting thing. Channel 4 were like, “Are you sure this isn’t going to be a really dull film?” We worked really hard to make it, I won’t say entertaining, but watchable and approachable and easy to understand. That was all during COVID so it was super difficult. To get from the U.K. to Los Angeles, we had to go spend two weeks in Serbia. At the time, you couldn’t get a flight from London to L.A. — those were the COVID travel restrictions. So we really tried very hard to be there for those court hearings.
In “Leaving Neverland 2,” the lawyers for Jackson’s estate are heard in court but again declined to be on camera or participate in interviews. Why do you think that is?
I was desperate to show their side — genuinely interested and wanting to hear, what is your side of this story? Tell me all the things that, in your view, make James and Wade not credible witnesses. I want to hear that. And so I think part of the problem is, they actually don’t have anything to say except for slinging mud at Wade and James, which I don’t think really sticks. You can see in the film, I end up writing an email saying, “I am begging you, give me something.” And then they just mocked me. So I think that tells you everything you need to know about their desire to put their side across. And I think the way they really wanted to put their narrative out there was this biopic.
Speaking of the biopic, I know you’ve spoken out before about an early version of the script. What are your thoughts on recent reports that the third act had to be reshot due to the estate’s agreement that Chandler’s story couldn’t be dramatized?
You’d have thought that with some of Hollywood’s highest paid lawyers, they could have taken the trouble to review the settlement that they signed in order to make the first accuser go away. But they obviously didn’t do that. So, that’s a massive fuck up. I think on the one hand they must be saying, “Look, let’s just put a movie out with the songs.” And it’s a guaranteed couple hundred million, right? The New York Times and Vanity Fair and everybody’s going to laugh at them, but who cares because cha-ching. But maybe they’re too proud to do that.
The script really did try and tackle the Jordie Chandler thing. They did portray Jordie as a liar and his parents as gold diggers, and there’s a couple of just plain lies in there. But probably that’s all been cut out now, for obvious reasons. So I wonder how they’re going to get their narrative out there.
The way you represent the estate’s side is through interviews with superfans — though they won’t be in the Channel 4 version. Why not and what was the experience like of interviewing them?
Channel 4 said, “They’re U.S. fans, we’re not that keen.” I’m very grateful to the fans who took part, that they had the balls to come forward and sit for an interview. But yeah, what are they supposed to say? They represent the idea that Jackson was some kind of pristine God, some kind of asexual being who was a great entertainer and therefore he couldn’t really be a pedophile, which if you think about it for two seconds, doesn’t make sense. I go to the fans partly because I can’t get to the representatives or the family, and partly also because Jackson’s a cultural phenomenon, and these people to some extent represent the cultural impact that he has. These are people who worship him, who think he’s something more than just a human being. So that illustrates what you’re up against.
I also really love Z, who is the fan who watched “Leaving Neverland” and kind of changed his ideas. He has this wonderful line where he says, “People think he can’t be a pedophile because what, he can do the moonwalk? Because he can write catchy songs? Both those things can be true.” And I think he’s put his finger on it.
The first “Leaving Neverland” was on HBO in the U.S., while this next installment will be available on YouTube. Tell me about how that decision came to be — is it because of the lawsuit HBO was involved in with the first doc?
I would have loved to release this with HBO. That wasn’t possible. Clearly, it’s related to the lawsuit or the arbitration dispute. But HBO don’t call me up and say, “Hey, this is what’s happening with that case.” It all happens under wraps, so I don’t know. But they were unable to go with this one, which left us thinking, what can we do that’s kind of different and exciting and makes this film available at the click of a mouse? I think we’ve lived through a golden age of documentary and program-making in general with the rise of the streamers — but the future has got to be digital, right?
You’re planning on making a third installment to document Robson and Safechuck’s trial against Jackson’s companies, which is currently set for next year. Are you hopeful that HBO will release that?
Yes, I am.
What would you say to those who still assert Jackson’s innocence?
Look, the true believers are always going to be true believers. You could show them a video of Jackson molesting a child and there’s no amount of evidence that would suffice to change what’s almost a religious view. They’re part of a cult. And I really don’t expect people to stop listening to Michael Jackson’s music.
To be honest, from my point of view, this is a small story. It’s a story about two young men who set out to expose something bad that had been done to them when they were little children and it blew up into something much bigger than we thought. My quite narrow goal is to continue to faithfully depict what happened to these young men on their journey. I would like people to be aware of how difficult it is to get in front of a jury. I would like people to continue to take an interest in how child sexual abuse actually unfolds as opposed to all the sort of fictions and popular myths about it. And if I achieve that, then I’m happy, to be honest. My goal is not to knock Jackson off his pedestal — it never has been. There have been moments where it maybe looked that way, but as I sit here thinking about the film and what I’m excited about, it’s really to just tell the story of these two guys and to try and tell it to the end.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
