Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed blasts Michael Jackson biopic for depicting King of Pop as an 'angel'

Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed has slammed the new Michael Jackson biopic.

The filmmaker helmed the 2019 documentary that saw Wade Robson and James Safechuck open up about how they were allegedly sexually abused by the Billie Jean singer (allegations denied by the Jackson estate) and revealed that he was particularly appalled by the depiction of Jackson's relationship with children – with scenes in Antoine Fuqua's film showing the late King of Pop visiting sick youngsters in hospital - in the new movie Michael.

Reed told Variety: "That made me feel really icky. It suggests that Jackson's engagement with children was entirely benign and motivated by nothing but philanthropy.

"Jeffrey Epstein was a great philanthropist, and Harvey Weinstein was a great filmmaker, but there's unfortunately another dimension to their stories. In Jackson's case, he's such a cultural phenomenon that there's nothing you can do to eclipse that."

Reed added: "I want to clarify that I'm not calling for Jackson to be 'cancelled' and for nobody to listen to his music, but Wade and James' story needs to be respected as well, and what the movies does is creates a version of events that essentially portrays Wade, James, and others who've accused Jackson of child sexual abuse as liars without actually articulating it.

"They're saying that the reason Jackson liked children is because he's an angel and just wanted to be nice to children, not that he wanted to have sex with them."

Michael – in which the King of Pop is portrayed by his nephew Jaafar Jackson – ends in the 1980s before the late star was first accused of abuse and Reed slammed those behind the movie for ignoring the matter.

He said: "Why are they dancing around this? It's well-known that Jackson spent a long time with small-boy companions, including taking them into his bed at night and locking the door, which is undisputed – and that alone, if someone made a claim, is probably enough to convict him in a court of child sexual abuse – but with Jackson, none of this stuff seems to matter.

"And neither the estate nor the writer of the film nor anyone else has provided an alternative narrative apart from, oh, he didn't have a childhood, so he needed to spend the night alone with kids, which makes no sense."

Despite being slammed by critics, Michael has performed impressively at the box office and Reed believes this is because of the "myth" that surrounds the Thriller hitmaker – who died aged 50 in 2009.

The documentary maker said: "Jackson is an American myth, in addition to being an actual person, so he's metastasised into something much bigger than who he actually was.

"When that happens, it doesn't actually matter what the person was, because the person has been transfigured into something that is owned by the culture.

"He's become part of the collective imagination, and the collective imagination can never include the fact that he's a paedophile. It's just not possible. You can't say, God, that guy liked to have sex with children, but isn't his music great? That's not a narrative people can hold in their minds."