In this perverse world, Roman Polanski is a vilified cretin for a crime he admitted to, yet Michael Jackson, who was involved in two child sexual abuse allegations (one that he essentially bought his way out of), is still dubbed a saint. Riiiiiight.
Are you as sick of hearing about “Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” tour documentary as we are [or as least as I am]? The vulture culture surrounding it is nauseating, the hit-baiters covering every second of it are transparent and Jackson himself?
We do not understand why this man is beloved at all. The last decent thing he did musically was Bad and then he essentially became a freak of epic proportions. Did people forget all that after he died? Impugn the living, panegyrize the dead? Something like that?
Still, whether we like it or not, ‘This Is It’ is poised to dominate the box-office this weekend and it’s already started. The film broke a record yesterday grossing $2.2 million in it’s Tuesday night/Wednesday morning release and will have amassed $4.4 million for two days (though somehow Deadline Hollywood has an inflated number of $12 million for two days; apparently rival studios are reporting that foreign sales are “solid,” but “not spectacular”). Now EW says, $7.4 million. It’s like musical chairs out here.
There’s zero box-office competition this weekend and it’s estimated ‘This Is It’ could rake in somewhere between $40 or $50 million, but Sony already paid $60 million up front just for distribution rights. They’ll probably make their money back and then some, death culture is lucrative business especially for an iconic musician (though, really former icon, nothing worth discussing after 1987).
Yes, we’ll have a review in a bit, because we feel somewhat obligated (and one of our people went to a screening), but thank god it wasn’t actually me that had to sit through that thing.