Michael Jackson was “worse than Jeffrey Epstein,” Leaving Neverland director says

With last week’s release of Michael, anything related to the King of Pop have become a hot-button issue across newswires. Everyone is getting a word in on Michael Jackson, and Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed had some damning comparisons to make between one of the most famous entertainers of all time and our current zeitgeist’s most prominent sex offender. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Reed said that “a lot of people, I think, will kind of swallow any misgivings they may have and just sort of say, ‘Oh well, it’s a great jukebox movie,’” completely ignoring what he described as behavior “worse than Jeffrey Epstein.” In the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in December 2025, Jackson is pictured with the American financier and sex offender, alongside Diana Ross and Bill Clinton.

Michael just shattered the opening-weekend box-office record for biopics, grossing $97 million in the U.S. and $217 million worldwide. It seems that audiences may be experiencing a kind of mass cognitive dissonance in the name of nostalgia bait. At this rate, Michael will likely be one of 2026’s highest-grossing films across the board. As of this writing, it’s #6 on the yearly box office tally, trailing Wuthering Heights by $24 million. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is in the top spot, having grossed $831 million globally. But Michael’s strong ticket sales don’t remedy the film’s most-dangerous flaw: its handling of the child sexual abuse allegations that brought Michael Jackson under legal fire multiple times in the 1990s and 2000s. 

Jackson was acquitted of felony sex abuse charges in 2005, but, following then-13-year-old Jordan Chandler’s allegations in 1994, he reached a $23 million settlement with the Chandler family, ending an ongoing criminal investigation. The Leaving Neverland documentary detailed the stories of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who alleged that Jackson sexually abused them when they were children. Michael’s global popularity suggests that “people don’t care that [Jackson] was a child molester,” Reed continued. “Literally, people just don’t care. None of the allegations in Leaving Neverland have been seriously challenged, right? But there was enough noise online from those simplistic debunking [videos] that people found it easy to give themselves permission to like Michael Jackson’s music again, if they ever stopped liking it.” Reed continued, “I think a lot of people just love his music and turn a deaf ear. And short of having actual video evidence of Michael Jackson engaged in sexual intercourse with a 7-year-old child, I don’t know what would be sufficient to change these people’s minds.”

In a New Yorker feature Michael director Antoine Fuqua appeared to sort the claims that Jackson sexually assaulted children. “Sometimes people do some nasty things for some money,” he said, possibly alluding to Jackson’s accusers. Reed responded to Fuqua’s comments in his Hollywood Reporter interview: “For Antoine Fuqua to accuse people of gold digging is kind of ironic. It seems to me all the people involved in this movie are just making bank. How can you tell an authentic story about Michael Jackson without ever mentioning the fact that he was seriously accused of being a child molester? I just don’t really see it. If anyone’s making money, it’s Michael Jackson’s estate and the people who worked on this biographical picture.” 

According to reports, the third act of Michael was originally set to include the molestation accusations made by Chandler. However, a written agreement forbidding the inclusion of Chandler’s story in the biopic was signed by the Jackson family, and the third act was later rewritten to reflect those terms. 

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