HBO Max Singapore posted a beauty this week. Jaafar Jackson in the red leather jacket, gold script, the works, and a caption reading: “The king of pop has arrived.” Michael premieres on the platform on 25 September in what the poster itself calls select territories across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Somebody on that social team earned their corn.
Table of Contents
The Backstory
Seven years ago, the three letters at the top of that post broadcast Leaving Neverland.
Yes, HBO Max Singapore and the American pay-TV network are different operations inside the same corporate house. The audience sees HBO. That recognition is what Warner Bros. Discovery has spent years selling, and anyone who remembers what HBO broadcast in 2019 is apparently expected to consult an organisational chart before noticing the problem.
Refresher for anyone who came in late. March 2019: HBO airs Dan Reed’s two-part documentary, in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck allege that Jackson abused them as children. Jackson was acquitted of child-molestation charges in a separate case in 2005 and denied allegations of child sexual abuse throughout his life. The estate sued HBO, saying damages could run past $100 million, arguing that a 1992 contract to televise the Live in Bucharest concert from the Dangerous tour carried a non-disparagement clause, and that Reed’s film both breached it and drew on material connected to that tour. HBO called the suit frivolous and reached for the First Amendment. Judge George Wu sent it to arbitration anyway. In December 2020, the Ninth Circuit upheld him, noting that an arbitration clause in a 28-year-old contract can still bind the parties to it, and leaving the question of whether it had expired to the arbitrator.
It ground on until October 2024, when the dispute was resolved. After five years of lawyers, HBO’s public description of the outcome was that it had been amicable. Leaving Neverland was reported to be coming off Max as part of it, and off Max it came.
So the Michael Jackson shelf was already empty, and now they’re restocking it.
The Present
This is a licensing arrangement in a region where the service only replaced the ageing HBO Go in November 2024, under the name Max, before the three letters were put back on the door. In the United States, the film went to Starz in August, so this is the international leg. It cleared a billion dollars and overtook Oppenheimer as the highest-grossing biopic ever made in nominal terms. They could have left it at a release date. The royal welcome was added on top.
Has arrived is amusing to me. As though the man had been queuing outside in the rain. He has been bolted to the front of the September lineup, somewhere between Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires and a Korean drama about a guy who wins the lottery.
Warner Bros. Discovery is currently being sold to Paramount Skydance for $110 billion and cannot complete the sale because twelve state attorneys general and the Writers Guild are suing to block it on antitrust grounds, and a federal court has frozen the closing. Paramount had planned to be finished by the end of September. Instead, from 1 October, every day of delay adds roughly $7 million to what it will owe Warner’s shareholders if the deal eventually closes.
Streaming catalogues remember nothing, which is more or less the business model. Whoever owns HBO Max this time next year, the caption will still say Michael Jackson has arrived.
The King of Pop moonwalks his way onto HBO Max on the 25th of September. Get out the gloves and jackets in time.
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About the Author
As a freelance journalist, Ryan Smith’s work is driven by a commitment to restoring what has long been absent from institutions meant to uphold truth and accountability: honesty and transparency. Alongside his analysis works on the life, career, trials and tribulations of Michael Jackson, whose unfair treatment over the years paved the way for the path he is on, Smith also dissects and examines popular culture, such as books, movies and video games, always aiming to shed light on what’s beneath the surface.
