Dan Reed says the fight over Leaving Neverland is not over, even though HBO took the documentary down after a legal settlement with the Jackson estate. Reed said the film, which premiered on HBO in 2019 and later won an Emmy, could return after 2029, when HBO's license expires.
Reed said he can resell the film and make it available again after that date. He also said the sequel went out on YouTube in the U.S., keeping the story alive long after the first film vanished from HBO, where it had been available for six years.
The removal came after the Jackson estate pressed HBO over a non-disparagement clause in a 1992 contract for a concert recording in Budapest, which Reed said the estate argued should apply forever to anything HBO might ever do. Reed said the estate persuaded HBO to reach what he called an amicable settlement. The estate has also dismissed the Emmy recognition as “a complete fiction” and “completely one-sided.”
Reed has no patience for the idea that the Jackson name can be handled like any other celebrity brand. He said he learned Michael Jackson “fucked little boys,” and described approaching Wade Robson and James Safechuck with skeptical distance before hearing detailed accounts of childhood abuse at Jackson’s hands. The accusations have followed Jackson since 1993, and Reed said the singer remained protected by a culture in which, in his words, “You can’t say anything nasty about Michael,” even when the allegations were, as he put it, “worse than Jeffrey Epstein.”
That old battle is colliding with a new surge in Jackson-related business. Jackson’s streaming numbers are up, MJ the Musical is a Broadway juggernaut, and Lionsgate’s Michael, a biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson, is set to open on nearly 4,000 screens. Reed’s view is that the legal fight may have muted Leaving Neverland for now, but it did not settle the larger argument over how Jackson’s legacy is being sold.
The result is a familiar split: the accusations of child sexual abuse remain part of Jackson’s history, while the entertainment business keeps finding ways to revive his image. Reed says the documentary can come back once the license clock runs out in 2029. By then, the bigger question may be whether the market that keeps rewarding Jackson will leave enough room for the film that accused him.
