You’d think that after HBO blew the lid on Michael Jackson with their ambitious and revelatory documentary Leaving Neverland, we’d be over making more Jackon projects as we near the new decade.
There’s currently a biopic in the works, a musical in production, and now there’s another musical to be made about the infamous singer. This musical however isn’t exactly what you’d expect when you think about the dethroned King of Pop. Johnny Depp, yes, that Johnny Depp, is producing a show from the playwright Julien Nitzberg that will be told from the perspective of Michael Jackson’s white sequined glove. You can’t make this stuff up folks..
The full title? For the Love of Glove: An Unauthorized Musical Fable About the Life of Michael Jackson, as Told by His Glove. Opening January 25th in Los Angeles, the show will “look into the strange forces that shaped Michael and the scandals that bedevilled his reputation.” Those forces apparently include the singer’s favourite glove, which as Nitzberg writes it, is an alien being questing for the blood of youths. That’s one way to put a spin on Jackson’s nonce inclinations.
It gets crazier, as the play’s real-life actors will perform alongside life-size puppets representing a number of figures from Jackson’s life. The Jackson 5, Donny Osmond, Emmanuel Lewis, Corey Feldman, and even Bubbles the Chimp will all be represented in felt.
Nitzberg told Page Six that the idea actually manifested 17 years ago while he was in meetings with “a major TV network” for a true Jackson biopic. “…The question came up [about] how to deal with the child-abuse allegations,” Nitzberg recalled. “I said, how’s this? Everything MJ has been accused of has actually been caused by his glove, which is actually an alien from outer space [and] feeds on virgin boy blood. They laughed and said, ‘Can you do the normal version?’”
The playwright found it “morally kind of repugnant to me to do” the story without addressing the child-abuse allegations. “I turned down a really big paycheck,” he said.
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