No, it’s not a joke. The King of Pop Michael Jackson, who died in June 2009, considered in the 90s to buy the famous Comics house to get his hands on the rights of the spider man.
Michael Jackson Buying Marvel Comics??? The good joke! Hey no, it’s even all that is more serious. Because if History has retained the announcement of the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by Disney in 2009, the famous house of comics might well have been bought ten years earlier by the King of Pop.
In fact, the latter was notoriously a die-hard Spider-Man fan. So much so that, in the 90s, long before Tobey Maguire put on the spider-man costume in front of Sam Raimi’s camera, Michael Jackson even cherished the dream of making a film regarding his favorite superhero. And, since you are never better served than by yourself, why not put on the costume itself?
The singer even met Stan Lee, who apparently was not immune to the idea of Jackson, who wanted to buy the rights to Spider-Man. But when the comic book creator told him that he would have to go through Marvel for such negotiations, Jackson then considered buying the company.
Check out this short video of the singer, who is in Stan Lee’s office. While paying homage to his creative genius, Jackson also evokes the idea of developing a project with the man from Marvel.
This idea of a takeover of Marvel by Michael Jackson has long been rumored. In April 2020 -yes, that’s way late- the story was confirmed by none other than the late singer’s nephew, Taj Jackson, in a podcast titled Popcorned Planet. He explains that his uncle did try to buy Marvel, and not just the rights to Spider-Man, as originally envisaged.
“It was Marvel and I remember it. I remember being with my brothers and him talking regarding buying Marvel. He wanted to do this with Stan Lee. They had talked and discussed it. Unfortunately this did not happen, I think they were prevented from doing so. I don’t know the reasons, but they were definitely doing it.”
Finally, the information may not be so much in the fact that Jackson wanted to buy Marvel, but that he wanted to do it WITH Stan Lee. If the idea had materialized, it is an understatement to say that the future of the license would certainly have known a different trajectory than that of Disney and its MCU.
