They Don’t Make Celebrities Like Michael Jackson Anymore

A few years ago, Magic Johnson told a story about Michael Jackson that seems almost unimaginable today. In the 1980s, the former Los Angeles Lakers superstar invited Jackson to a Lakers game, an invitation the singer was initially hesitant to accept because he was worried that his presence would create too much of a frenzy. As it turned out, those fears were justified. “He sat down; people went crazy,” Johnson recalled to Variety. “They were running from upstairs, the sides. We had to stop the game to get him out.”As popular as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Drake are, all have attended sporting events without causing a stoppage in play. But Michael Jackson, after he became famous, was different. He existed on a truly singular plane of stardom—and nearly 20 years after his death, he still inspires a unique level of obsession, devotion, and curiosity from fans, even those who weren’t alive to see him in the flesh. The enormous success of Michael, the recently released biopic about Jackson’s life, is a testament to that staying power. Already, the movie is the second-highest-grossing biopic of all time, and there’s serious speculation that a sequel will be produced, given that the movie’s timeline stops in the late 1980s.Audiences haven’t been deterred by the critics largely panning the film for being shallow and offensively commercial. The flurry of headlines about what was left out of the film—most obviously, the 1993 lawsuit that accused Jackson of molesting a 13-year-old, and subsequent lawsuits alleging similar abuse—also haven’t mattered. (Jackson settled the 1993 lawsuit and denied wrongdoing; in 2005, he was acquitted in a lawsuit brought by a different accuser. Jackson, who died in 2009, was accused of sexually assaulting four children in a new lawsuit filed against his estate in February. The estate has denied the allegations.) Regardless of any prior negative buzz, the Michael filmmakers were counting on nostalgia overpowering the controversy about the movie’s