Las Vegas Weekly

August 20, 2009 · 4:12 PM

Michael Jackson’s This Is It concert movie set for October release

By Robin Leach

Michael Jackson rehearses for his This Is It show at Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 23, 2009.

Photo: Kevin Mazur/AEG/WireImage

King of Pop Michael Jackson’s This Is It concert rehearsal footage will be released as a full-length movie on Oct. 28. Sony Pictures confirmed this afternoon that tickets will go on sale Sept. 28.

The film will run in a limited two-week release, although insiders tell me that if demand is huge, it will be automatically extended. At the same time, though, Sony and Michael’s estate want to use the film to increase demand for the DVD.

One Las Vegas theater group is already talking of running it around the clock in two-hour intervals for all 14 days if the day and night demand is there. This afternoon's decision by Sony confirms exactly what I first reported exclusively here at Vegas DeLuxe less than two weeks after Michael’s death that a film from all the rehearsal footage would be created and released this fall. Click HERE for that story.

The film is being edited and directed by Kenny Ortega, who directed the highly successful High School Musical flicks for Disney. Kenny, the creator of the Sirens show here at Treasure Island, was the creative partner with Michael on the proposed 50-run London concerts at O2 Arena. AEG Concerts West and Kenny filmed 80 hours of footage from the planning stage to dress rehearsals, and that's being culled down to the two-hour running time of the movie.

Today, Kenny said: “As we began assembling the footage for the motion picture, we realized we captured something extraordinary, unique and very special. It is raw, emotional, moving and powerful footage that captured Michael’s interactions with the collaborators that he had personally assembled for this once-in-a-lifetime project.”

I have reliably learned that the film will chronicle all the behind-the-scenes footage of the final dress rehearsals at Staples Center in L.A., where Michael performed the night before his death, and all the various stages of hiring dancers and other stage performers and their own rehearsals.

“It’s a treasure trove of spectacular footage, and the movie will be a spectacular box office blockbuster. It will be No. 1 right around the world those two weeks,” I was told.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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