HBO may be getting cold feet about airing the documentary “Leaving Neverland,” which depicts the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, as a pedophile. HBO’s possibly backing down comes amid backlash from the deceased singer’s estate.
According to Showbiz411, Dan Reed’s documentary may not air on HBO as scheduled due to the intense war that Michael Jackson’s estate has waged against the network to keep it from going public.
“Apparently, Jackson’s estate lawyer Howard Weitzman, according to sources, has sent HBO very tough communications about the downside of libeling the King of Pop even in death,” reports Roger Friedman. “HBO’s documentary division is so well respected that I’m told Weitzman’s criticisms, as well those voiced in other places including this column, may wind up killing the [documentary’s] presentation.”
Critics of “Leaving Neverland,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, have denounced the film as being one-sided by presenting the allegations of pedophilia made by Wade Robson and James Safechuck without any accompanying defense of Jackson. Kyle Smith of National Review, however, says the documentary presents a “damning picture” of the singer as an abuser of little boys on his Neverland Ranch:
Wade Robson, 36, and James Safechuck, 40, have previously stated under oath that they weren’t victimized by Jackson when they were children. They are now saying their previous testimony was untrue and that it resulted from direct pressure by Jackson himself, who told them that he and they would be jailed if he should be convicted of sexual abuse. “I want to speak the truth as loud as I spoke the lie,” Robson says in the four-hour documentary Leaving Neverland, which has just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of being broadcast on HBO later this year. In the film, he and Safechuck tell their stories in gruesome, indeed sickening, detail. (A statement from the Jackson estate dismissed the allegations as uncorroborated “tabloid character assassination.”)
Safechuck was a child actor who says he met Jackson at age ten while filming a Pepsi commercial. Starting when he was eleven, he says, they engaged in sex acts many times at Jackson’s Neverland compound — in a castle, in an attic, in a pool, in a train station. Safechuck says the pop singer used to hold drills in which he would train the boy in putting his clothes on quickly in case any witnesses should appear. Jackson also told him that “if anyone ever found out that we were doing these sexual things, we would go to jail for the rest of our lives.” “I was terrified.” When Safechuck was 14, he says, Jackson staged a mock wedding with him, complete with vows and a diamond-encrusted wedding ring.
Jackson’s former maid, Adrian McManus, recently told The Daily Mail that she believes the claims made in “Finding Neverland,” saying she witnessed the pop star behave inappropriately with children on multiple occasions.
“Michael would have his underwear floating in the water and the little boys’ underwear floating in the water together,” she said. “If they weren’t floating in the water, they were outside on the floor around the Jacuzzi. So I would find stuff like that.”
“With all the little boys he would hold their hands and kiss them,” she continued. “And they would fight for Michael’s love. It was a strange environment to watch.”
McManus says she kept quiet out of fear for her life, alleging Jackson’s bodyguards threatened to hire a hitman if she ever went public.