The first Michael biopic crossed $1 billion at the global box office, and now all eyes are on what comes next. The film focused on Michael Jackson‘s origins, his meteoric rise, and his career through the 1987 release of Bad, stopping well before the child abuse allegations that first emerged in the 1990s and reshaped the public’s relationship with one of the most iconic figures in music history.

The sequel will go there, and according to lead star Jaafar Jackson, it will do so from a perspective the family believes has never been given a fair hearing.

In a recent conversation with GQ Middle East, Jaafar opened up about the vision behind splitting his uncle’s life across two films and what he hopes the second chapter will accomplish.

“I think the second film will give even more insight from his point of view, because at the end of the day, [the allegations] are always from someone else’s,” he said. “It’s someone else’s story. It’s someone else’s idea of what it is, and it’s mainly driven by an agenda. And that’s really the issue we’ve been having as a family — not having Michael’s voice being heard. I think that’s very, very important, especially in the late years.”

For Jaafar, the two-film structure was always about building a foundation before the storm. Audiences needed to understand who Michael Jackson was as a person before they could fully grasp what he endured.

“You understand who he was as a human being first, because at the end of the day, that’s who he was in the ’90s until he passed,” he said. “He never changed that purity, that sense of always wanting to find the good in other people. And no matter all the stuff he went through, how he was treated, what things were said about him, he never stopped treating people with kindness… even though he was broken, his heart still stayed the same.”

Fans have also raised questions about why certain family members, most notably Janet Jackson, were absent from the first film. Jaafar made clear it had nothing to do with tension within the family. The reasoning was more straightforward than that. “I don’t want to speak too early, but Janet has ideas of maybe doing her own film,” he said. “So having someone portrayed in this and then choosing a different actor for her own is just…” He left it there.

With Lionsgate targeting a late 2026 or early 2027 production start for the sequel, the screenplay is still in active development. The first film gave the world Michael Jackson the phenomenon. The second one is going to have to reckon with everything that came after.