Lionsgate Just Confirmed 'Michael 2' Is Happening, and a Quarter of It Is Already Shot
With $704M USD at the global box office and counting, the Michael Jackson biopic sequel is moving fast.
Summary
- Lionsgate has confirmed Michael 2 is in active development, with Motion Picture Chair Adam Fogelson revealing on the company’s recent earnings call that 25-30% of the sequel is already shot from footage captured during the original production
- Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop, has grossed $704M USD worldwide since opening April 24 and is on track to become the first Lionsgate film to top $1 billion USD at the global box office
- Fogelson confirmed the sequel can move both forwards and backwards in time relative to the first film, with significant portions of Jackson’s music catalog and life story still untouched
Lionsgate confirmed during its recent earnings call that Michael 2 is coming, and it is already further along than anyone outside the studio knew. Motion Picture Chair Adam Fogelson revealed that 25-30% of the sequel has already been shot from footage captured during the original production, giving the studio a significant head start on a follow-up to a film that has earned $704M USD worldwide and is closing in on $1 billion USD.
The speed at which Michael 2 is materialising makes sense when you look at what the first film has done at the box office. Michael opened April 24 and has not let up since, making it not only one of the year’s biggest commercial stories but the vehicle through which Lionsgate is poised to cross the $1 billion USD global threshold for the first time in the studio’s history. CEO Jon Feltheimer put the studio’s position plainly: “We believe there is a lot more story to tell and a lot more music to share.” That is not a speculative statement from a studio hedging its bets. It is a confirmation from a company that already knows what it has.
Fogelson’s earnings call comments fill in the creative picture. The 25-30% already shot figure is the detail that changes the conversation most significantly — it means Michael 2 is not starting from scratch but building on material that already exists, which compresses both the production timeline and the financial exposure considerably. “Undoubtedly that 25% to 30% will be material,” he said, declining to quantify the exact benefit but making clear it is meaningful. Beyond the logistics, Fogelson’s description of the sequel’s creative range is expansive: “We can go forwards and backwards in telling this story. There are so many other events that happened, even in the time frame of the original movie, that weren’t touched upon.” The first film spans Michael Jackson‘s early life through the Jackson Five era and his rise to become the biggest entertainer in the world. Everything that followed — the Thriller era, the controversies, the later years — remains available territory, as does deeper exploration of the period already covered.
The music catalog is the other variable Fogelson flagged explicitly, noting that “much of the biggest and most popular parts of his music catalog” were not included in the first film. For a biopic built around one of the most commercially dominant catalogs in the history of recorded music, that is a significant statement about what Michael 2 could deliver that its predecessor did not.
