Michael has now crossed $897 million at the worldwide box office, making it the second-highest-grossing music biopic in history. But the number people rarely talk about is the one behind the camera — how many years it took to rebuild what audiences saw on screen.
The Full Behind-The-Scenes Making-Of Here
Costume designer Marci Rodgers didn’t sketch new outfits. She went into Michael Jackson’s actual clothing archive and worked backwards from documented photographs of every look he ever wore.
Every jacket, every glove, every stage costume Jaafar Jackson wears in the film is based on something Michael actually wore — not a reimagining, but a reconstruction.
Rodgers said her goal was to show Michael the person, not just Michael the performer.
Makeup and hair designer Bill Corso had the same mission for the Thriller sequence. His instruction to his team was explicit — no modern techniques, no silicone or airbrushing. Foam rubber appliances, greasepaint, applied exactly the way Rick Baker did it in 1983. He wanted the same look, achieved the same way.
Exclusive Backstage Images Of The Biopic Making
Jaafar’s transformation changed scene by scene throughout filming — different eyebrows, skin tone, nose, chin, hair — tracking Michael’s appearance across two decades.
Photographer Kevin Mazur, who spent years photographing the real Michael Jackson, was on set and said walking onto that stage felt like going back in time.
THE FILM WENT THROUGH 22 DAYS OF ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY, A BUDGET THAT GREW TO OVER $200 MILLION, and years of negotiation with the Jackson estate over music rights.
The result was a recreation so precise that most audiences never stopped to ask how they did it. And that was the whole point!