The Hollywood Reporter today has a story in which a small-time filmmaker called Bryan Michael Stoller says that Michael Jackson had been planning to co-direct a movie, once his commitments with his London concerts had come to an end. The film was to be based on the book They Cage The Animals At Night, Jennings Michael Burch’s memoir about being bounced around foster homes as a child.
While this sounds like someone coming out of the woodwork after Jackson’s death to make bogus claims to get them publicity, Stoller may well be telling the truth. Indeed THR has a video (embedded below) which features Jackson interviewing Burch before his death for a previously planned adaptation of the movie, which fell apart due to Michael’s arrest and trial under molestation charges.
It’s also true that Jackson briefly appeared in Stoller”s low-budget 2004 movie, Miss Cast Away And The Island Girls, which went straight to DVD and then got pulled from US shelves due to the high-profile Jackson court case.
According the Stoller, Jackson had become interested again in making a film of They Cage The Animals At Night not long before his death, and had agreed to co-direct and help finance the film.
Click below to see the video from THR, which includes footage from his virtually unknown Miss Cast Away screen appearance.