[COLUMN] Michael is Getting One of Hollywood's Hottest New Trends: The Sin-Eating Sequel | by Darren Mooney

Note: This piece contains, in the broadest possible terms, details for the ending of Michael, which is in theatres now. It’s not really a spoiler, since it is more about what is not in the movie, but just to be aware of that going in. If you do want to see the film completely blind, this is your chance to Beat It.

Michael is reportedly getting a sequel.

This is not entirely a surprise. The film was a troubled production, with the original framing device of the 1993 sexual abuse allegations scrapped at the last minute, leaving the film without a clear ending. Director Antoine Fuqua reportedly delivered an early cut that was three and a half hours of what executives called “amazing footage.” Adam Fogelson at Lionsgate confirmed that the studio was “making sure that [they were] in a position to deliver more Michael” if the film was a hit.

Across the press tour, the production team have been hinting at plans for a sequel. Fuqua claims, despite the released cut ending in 1988, he filmed footage as far ahead as 1995. Asked on the Today show about the choice to elide the abuse allegations around its subject, actor Colman Domingo stated, “There's a possibility of there being a part two, that may deal with some other things that happen afterwards.” The film ends with the promise – or the threat – “his story continues.”

The film has certainly performed well enough to earn a sequel. It grossed $217 million worldwide in its opening weekend, breaking the record set by Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer as the biggest opening for a biographical film ever. With the next few weeks relatively light in terms of blockbuster spectacle, with respect to The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Mortal Kombat II, it has a decent chance of a blockbuster run competing with or perhaps even surpassing Bohemian Rhapsody and Oppenheimer.

However, there is a lingering question about what the sequel would contain. Michael follows the career of Michael Jackson (Jaafar Jackson) from his childhood through to 1988 and runs through a cavalcade of the star’s greatest hits: his time with the Jackson 5, his albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, his music videos for smashes like “Wanna Be Starting Something” and “Thriller”, his performance of “Billie Jean” at Motown 25. These were all seismic events.

In terms of material left to be covered, there are a couple of albums: Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible. There are a few singles of note, like “Black or White”, “Heal the World” or “Earth Song.” The most notable music video there is “Scream”, which is likely very difficult to replicate without involving Janet. This period was largely seen as one of gradual creative decline for Jackson, falling behind artists like Guns ’n’ Roses.

To put this in perspective, the last three albums featured in Michael – Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad – sold a combined 125 million copies. The three albums that would be featured in the sequel – Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible – shifted only 63 million copies. That represents a fairly significant decrease in the artist’s cultural footprint. If part of the appeal of Michael is travelling to the cinema to hear beloved songs and see iconic visuals, the sequel faces a significant hurdle in that regard.

The problem is compounded by the fact, thanks to ineptitude from the production team, Michael had the luxury of ending in 1988, right before the first major child sex abuse allegations. It is akin to ending a biography of Adolf Hitler in 1938 or a biography of John Landis with him agreeing to direct a segment of the Twilight Zone movie. The film ends with the last unequivocally good moment in the singer’s life and career, the last point at which the audience can think of the man, not the allegations.

It was a smart choice for Michael, and it is most likely responsible for a not-inconsiderable amount of the film’s success. Most audiences want to watch a biography of a musician that they like so they can listen to his music, and mostly don’t want to be confronted with allegations of child abuse. Even with the Jackson estate’s tendency to portray the accusers as money-hungry parasites, that sort of thing leaves a sour taste in the viewer’s mouth. Michael is able to avoid that completely. The sequel can’t.

As a result, the inevitable follow-up to Michael feels like one more example of an increasingly prevalent trend in contemporary cinema: the sin-eating sequel. Think of it as the opposite of delayed gratification. It’s a hangover in cinematic form, the price paid for premature gratification. This sort of film is the inevitable product of the modern franchise age, where films are no longer conceived as standalone entities, even at their inception. A lot of big budget crowd-pleasing spectacles are pitched as multi-instalment sagas, allowing studios to maximize their return on investment.

Cynically, part of the appeal of approaching material like this is that it allows the production team to be strategic about what goes where. If the entirety of an adaptation no longer has to be condensed into a single film, its constituent elements can be restructured and redistributed across distinct instalments to be released separately. There are clever things that can be done with this creatively, such as Denis Villeneuve’s structuring of his Dune duology, but there are also pragmatic choices.

Andy Muschietti’s IT is a great example of this. The two films adapt Stephen King’s beloved horror epic. The novel unfolds across two tracks in parallel, telling the story of a bunch of adults returning to their hometown, flashing back to a traumatic childhood summer there. The characters confront the sinister Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) in both past and present. However, one of the bigger issues with the novel is that the stuff with the kids is much more engaging than the adult framing story.

So IT makes the pragmatic decision to split the story in half. The first film – marketed as IT and revealed in its closing title card to be IT Chapter One – is focused entirely on the characters as kids. This approach, building the first part around the best parts of the book, worked like gangbusters. IT garnered rave reviews and grossed over $700 million. It became the highest-grossing horror film of all-time and the highest-grossing Stephen King adaptation of all-time.

This was great for IT Chapter One, but it created problems for IT Chapter Two. The grown-up story had always been a challenge in adapting IT to screen, and it was even less engaging, completely divorced from the parallel story following the characters as kids. IT Chapter Two earned decidedly less enthusiastic reviews and had to settle for a total gross of $473 million worldwide. It was not a total embarrassment, but it was a clear step down from the first film.

Similar choices were made in adapting the stage musical Wicked to screen. The longstanding consensus among musical theatre fans is that the first half of Wicked is far superior to the second, with even fans of the show conceding that the post-interval stretch of the show “isn’t the stronger half.” As with Michael, most of the beloved songs are in the first half, with the show heralding the interval through “Defying Gravity”, the musical theatre equivalent of crack cocaine.

The split undoubtedly benefited the first of the two films, simply titled Wicked. The film was able to focus cleanly on the soon-to-be-Wicked-Witch Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and her friendship with Glinda (Ariana Grande) at the magical university known as Shiz. It also built to a spectacular action climax set against one of the greatest anthems of 21st century musical theatre. The audience loved it. Wicked garnered strong reviews, grossed over $750 million worldwide and earned ten Oscar nominations.

It also put the sequel, Wicked: For Good, in an untenable position. Wicked: For Good was tasked with adapting the less popular half of the stage show and denied the goodwill of an audience that had just been hit with “Defying Gravity” earlier that same evening. It was also an incredibly convoluted mess of a film. It was not only a direct follow-up to Wicked, but a story unfolding in parallel to The Wizard of Oz, with the beloved classic playing out between the scenes of the sequel.

Critics doused Wicked: For Good with cold water. The film earned a more modest $540 million worldwide. It also earned zero Oscar nominations. So there is an interesting and clear pattern emerging here, with these big epic films being structured so that they are frontloaded with the crowd-pleasing material, holding back anything more difficult or less inherently appealing for the inevitable sequel that underperforms critically and commercially.

Of course, from the studios’ perspective, this is not the worst outcome. Even at a higher price point, two Wicked movies that average out to a mixed reception and gross a combined $1.29 billion represent a much better deal for Universal than a single well-reviewed installment that grossed $750 million. Indeed, there is an argument that a complete and abridged done-in-one version of Wicked might have grossed less than the half-a-film version that ended on “Defying Gravity” earned alone.

The same logic applies to IT and Michael. There is a case to be made that Michael was more successful than a film that tried to include his later career would have been, and that IT Chapter One performed better than an alternate version of the film that tried to include both plotlines together. The second halves of those stories are much tougher sells and are somewhat flawed from their conception, but the split allows for first instalments that garner good will that carries over.

The sin-eating sequel serves its purpose, operating as a storage space for difficult elements of an adaptation that might impinge upon the audience’s enjoyment of the first film. It’s the equivalent of moving vegetables around a dinner plate; they probably have to be eaten at some point, but why not start with meat and potatoes? It’s an easy calculation for studios to make. While these sin-eating sequels under-perform, they allow the early film to succeed and can coast off the resulting success.

It is interesting to wonder if these sequels – although it is perhaps more apt to consider them as extensions – will have any long-term impact on the reputations of these films. Has the cultural memory of IT Chapter One been diminished in any way by the limpness of IT Chapter Two? Did Wicked: For Good kill a lot of the enthusiasm that had been generated by Wicked? Will a sequel to Michael focused on child sex abuse allegations harm the original film’s long-term reputation?

Such things arguably do not matter to the executives greenlighting these projects and the producers structuring these movies to maximize long-term financial gain. The sin is swallowed, and that is enough. Keeping it down is somebody else’s problem.