If you watched the Super Bowl halftime show in January 1993, you remember the opening. Michael Jackson seemed to burst up on top of the giant stadium video screens, way up high, as the crowd went wild. Then he shot onto center stage, planted his feet and stood there without moving for almost two minutes.
It’s one of the most famous starts to any show ever. And this winter the whole story is coming to the screen in a brand-new film.
But here’s something almost nobody in that stadium knew. The Michael they first saw, high up on the screens, wasn’t Michael at all.
Let’s go back to that day. It was Jan 31, 1993, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The official count was 98,374 fans packed into the stands. When those figures appeared on top of the two huge screens, the roar was deafening. Everyone assumed they were looking at the King of Pop himself.
They weren’t. Those figures were stand-ins, look-alikes placed up high to fool the eye. While the whole crowd stared at the screens, the real Michael was getting into position for the trick that came next. He didn’t walk out onto that stage. He launched straight up through it, to the very spot where he froze.
A new film is about to tell the whole tale. It’s called “Spectacle: Michael Jackson at the Super Bowl,” directed by Bao Nguyen, the same filmmaker behind “The Greatest Night in Pop.” It comes to Hulu and ESPN in February 2027, with footage of Michael and his team that no one has seen before. Here’s the first look.
The teaser for the new Super Bowl film
That halftime show made history in another way too. It was the first time ever that the Super Bowl TV audience actually grew between the halves instead of drifting off. People were calling friends and telling them to turn it on.
Want to relive the famous opening? The clip below captures the whole thing, the figures up on the screens and then Michael rising onto the stage into his frozen pose.
Michael’s 1993 Super Bowl opening
Watch it knowing the secret this time. Look at the figures up top, then watch how the real Michael appears below. Once you see how it was all staged, that two-minute stand turns from a simple pose into one of the boldest openings a stadium crowd ever fell for.