Oh, Michael Jackson Death Profiteers. Don’t stop ’til you get enough, isn’t that how it goes? Even as This Is It continues to play in theaters, Billboard reports that the DVD and Blu-ray editions of the Kenny Ortega-directed movie will be released on January 26, 2010. (D’oh! How’d they miss Christmas?)
Both versions of This Is It will include more than 90 minutes of extras, including the mini-documentaries “Staging the Return: Beyond the Show” and “Staging the Return: The Adventure Begins.” But if you’re a Jacko fan, the Blu-ray edition wins out, as it will contain the uncut music videos for “Smooth Criminal” and “Thriller” from the movie.
Meanwhile, the DVD release of This Is It will come shortly after the six-episode run of upcoming A&E reality series The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty is ending. Why does this not seem like mere coincidence? More »
Michael Jackson’s posthumous concert-rehearsal documentary This Is It had an OK opening weekend here in the United States—it was the highest-grossing movie from Friday to Sunday, although the $21.3 million it pulled in was below expectations. (It’s raked in $32.5 million here since opening on Wednesday—way lower than the $250-million-in-five-days figure that concert promoter AEG Live had touted in the run-up to the movie.) Over the weekend, This Is It distributor Sony Pictures announced that it had decided to keep the movie in theaters for longer than its initial two-week run, spinning the move as such: More »
The eight bucks that I plunked down to catch Michael Jackson’s posthumous rehearsal flick This Is It at my local malltiplex yesterday? That was 0.000108% of the film’s first-day gross of $7.4 million. It’s expected to bring in $40 million through Sunday. [Billboard] More »
Michael Jackson’s This Is It opens with a slow burn, which is probably the way the man who the film was created in honor of would have wanted it; a scroll about the film’s origins that oddly glides over the manner of his untimely passing, the title card, and then a series of reactions from the show’s would-be dancers, all gathered to audition for the man who, to hear them tell it, inspired him to dance. When Michael does finally arrive on screen, then, the viewer has been prepared for his arrival—and yet, it’s still kind of incredible, to see this man who for so long had loomed as something larger than life, in part because he really wanted to, actually appear on screen in something resembling his element. More »
Our look at the closing lines of music-related reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to This Is It, the limited-release film that compiles rehearsal footage of the late Michael Jackson as he warmed up for last summer’s ill-fated run of shows at London’s O2 Arena: More »
ARTIST: Michael Jackson
TITLE: “This Is It”
WEB DEBUT: Oct. 12, 2009 More »
