Why the Golden Globes Put Michael in the Drama Race

The Golden Globes have rejected Lionsgate’s bid to enter Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson, as a musical or comedy at the 2027 awards. The film is currently slated for the drama categories. The decision sounds peculiar if you begin with Jackson’s occupation. The Globes, however, asked a question about what his songs do inside the film.

The category rule, quoted by Billboard, says that “a musical can be a comedy or a drama in which songs are used in addition to spoken dialogue to further the plot.” The awards committee found Michael’s performances did not sufficiently drive its narrative. That is an eligibility judgment about the work of the songs, rather than a judgment that Jackson’s music is unimportant to the film. Lionsgate may appeal before the October 31 submission deadline; as of now, its bid has been denied.

Consider the problem from the committee’s chair. A film about a performer can devote considerable screen time to music while its spoken scenes carry the changes in relationships, conflict and circumstance. If the committee treats every onstage number as plot advancement simply because it depicts an artist’s career, almost any musician’s biopic could take the musical route. A rule requiring the songs to do narrative work gives the categories a boundary. It also asks voters to make a judgment that a running time or song count cannot settle: when does a performance change the story, and when does it illustrate a story told elsewhere?

Lionsgate’s submission has a coherent logic of its own. Jackson’s recordings and performances are the public life that makes this biopic possible; asking audiences to separate the artist’s story from its musical expression can feel rather like describing a dance while keeping one’s eyes on the shoes. A performance might reveal ambition, control or a relationship without supplying a new plot event. The committee’s reported decision suggests that such work did not meet its threshold in Michael. It does not tell us that these ways of reading a performance have no value. The useful question for viewers is narrower and more interesting than whether the film contains enough music: what, during a song, becomes different afterward?

A Category with a Memory

The Globes have made different choices for films about musicians. Ray, Taylor Hackford’s Ray Charles biopic, received a best picture musical or comedy nomination in 2004; James Mangold’s Johnny Cash film Walk the Line won in that category the following year. Bohemian Rhapsody won best picture drama in 2018. Elvis received a drama nomination in 2022, as did Mangold’s Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown in 2024. The sequence helps explain why Michael’s placement may surprise an audience that remembers Walk the Line, while looking familiar to one that remembers Elvis.

Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis offers another useful comparison. The story of a folk singer struggling for success received a musical or comedy nomination in 2013. It shares with Michael a musician at the center, but it is a fictional singer’s story rather than a biopic of a globally famous recording artist. The placements show that neither the musician-biopic label nor the presence of performances settles the Globes category. They do not reveal why the committee classified each earlier film as it did; applying today’s reported explanation to those decisions would give the historical record dialogue it has not spoken.

This history points to a recurring problem rather than proof that the rule has changed. Ray and Walk the Line entered musical or comedy; several later, prominent music biopics entered drama. Michael joins that latter group for now. The comparison invites an examination of each film’s construction, not a claim that all should receive the same label. A singer can be the subject of a drama, just as a film about an invented singer can be eligible as a musical. The category names are an administrative solution to a question art has no obligation to answer neatly.

The ruling has practical consequences. The Globes divide their lead-acting awards by genre, so Jaafar Jackson’s potential lead-actor nomination would be considered in drama rather than musical or comedy. The picture would likewise seek a drama nomination. Supporting performances have no equivalent genre split, leaving the category route unchanged for Colman Domingo and Nia Long, who play Jackson’s parents. Drama may be regarded as a tougher field, but a category switch cannot establish whether any one performer would have secured a nomination on the other ballot. Nominations are due to be announced December 7.

Michael grossed $1.029 billion worldwide, making it the first biopic to pass $1 billion. That figure measures the audience for a Jackson film; it supplies no answer to the Globes’ plot test. A box-office giant still has to fit into one of the awards body’s little labeled drawers. The drawer determines the competitors, even though the audience has already bought its tickets.

The Story Beyond the Songs

A separate argument about Michael concerns the narrative its makers were able, and chose, to tell. The film did not address the sexual abuse allegations against Jackson. A legal clause discovered late in production barred a fictional depiction of one of his accusers; a planned sequence involving a police raid at Neverland was cut, and Jackson’s family funded $50 million in reshoots. The film’s story ended earlier than intended. Jackson was acquitted of other child sexual abuse charges in 2005; further allegations featured in the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland.

Jaafar Jackson has suggested that a second film would address the allegations from his uncle’s point of view. In remarks to GQ Middle East relayed by the Guardian, he argued that the family wanted Jackson’s voice heard in the account of his later years. That is a stated intention for a sequel, not a resolution of the allegations or a description of a finished film. Antoine Fuqua, who directed Michael, has said the sequel should avoid sensationalising Jackson’s life. The first film’s omissions, the legal constraint and the family’s involvement give audiences reason to ask whose perspective structures this biopic, regardless of its awards category.

Those production choices did not form part of the reported reason for the Globes’ decision. They expose the limits of what that decision can tell us. The committee’s test concerns whether songs further the plot; the debate over the film’s curtailed account concerns which events belong in that plot at all. One question cannot answer the other. Viewers assessing Michael have to consider both what a performance contributes to the story on screen and what that story elects to leave beyond the frame.

For now, the Globes have placed Jackson’s biopic in drama, where its picture and lead actor will face a different nomination field. The ruling leaves a more durable question in the auditorium: when a singer’s life becomes a film, does the music tell the story, or does the story merely stop to let him sing?