The hooplah surrounding the 25th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson‘s Bad is getting even bigger. Not only will the album be re-released with a ton of extras (including a concert DVD, new remixes and unreleased recordings), filmmaker Spike Lee will direct a documentary that will coincide with the release of the re-issue.
“I’m more than just a huge fan of Michael Jackson, and having the chance to actually know him and work with him, I deeply care about his legacy,” said Lee. “With this Bad project I was able to uncover just what made this such a huge, important coming of age in his career and unearth compelling stories surrounding the making of the album, the long awaited follow-up to Thriller — the best-selling album of all time — the short films and the tour that may have never seen the light of day.”
“We have footage in this documentary that no one’s ever seen, stuff that Michael shot himself, behind-the-scenes stuff,” Lee said. “We had complete access to the vaults of Michael Jackson… He wrote 60 demos for the Bad record. Only 11 made it. So we got to hear a lot of that stuff, too, so it was just a great experience.”
The director adds that we’ll get a much more personal view of Jackson in the documentary. “He had a great sense of humor, and he was funny — so you’ll see a lot of that stuff,” said Lee.
The doc will also include interviews with artists inspired by Jackson, including Kanye West and Mariah Carey. Said Lee, “We really divided it into two things: Artists today who were influenced by Michael, and then people who worked side by side — musicians, songwriters, technicians, engineers, people at the label, who were all committed to Michael, to the follow-up to the biggest record of all time, which still is Thriller.”
There’s no set release date for the documentary, though we imagine it would be as close as possible to Bad 25‘s release date of September 18.
Lee directed the music video for “This Is It”, the first posthumous release from Jackson following his 2009 death. He now holds an annual birthday party for Jackson in Brooklyn every August 25.
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