It’s not just the money-making studio execs – fans, too, are often happy for the darker parts of a subject’s life to be ignored
Like millions of other people, I went to see Michael this week. I knew what I was getting into – most reviews have been brutal. It is a “whitewash”, “ghoulish”, a “127-minute trailer montage” of “cruise-ship entertainment”. And yet the film of Michael Jackson’s rise to global stardom has broken the record for the biggest opening in biopic history, and made $217m (£160m) worldwide on its first weekend of release, with over $900m projected by the end of its run.
So I found myself thinking: if we know these films are often sanitised pap, that the estates and lawyers have excised entire chapters of a musician’s life, why do we still go in droves? There’s the obvious explanation, of course. The biopics give audiences a way to experience a favourite artist at their peak and to dip into their much-loved musical catalogue.
Nadia Khomami is the arts and culture correspondent at the Guardian
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