‘Bubbles’, Taika Waititi’s Netflix Movie About Michael Jackson’s Pet Chimp, Is No Longer Happening
By Chris Evangelista/May 24, 2019 6:30 am EST
However, Waititi has officially departed, and his departure has inspired Netflix to cancel the project entirely. Waititi’s leaving is being chalked up to scheduling difficulties with the live-action Akira he’s directing, but it’s also highly likely the project is dead in the water due to Leaving Neverland, the disturbing HBO documentary that rekindled talk of Jackson’s alleged sexual misconduct with children.
Cartoon Brew has learned that Netflix’s Bubbles is no more. Per their report:
While I’m sure Akiria is playing a big part in the decision, I’m also sure that the buzz around Leaving Neverland was what ultimately killed the project entirely. The four-hour documentary, which premiered at Sundance this year before heading to HBO, painted a stark, disturbing portrait of Jackson as a master manipulator and unrelenting predator by highlighting his alleged sexual misconduct with his young fans.
Even before Leaving Neverland caused a stir, Waititi attempted to distance the project from Jackson’s image. “I want to focus on telling a story that blends fact and fantasy, about an animal trying to make sense of the world,” he said in 2017. “This film is not about Michael Jackson because that’s not a story for me to tell – or a story I’d be comfortable telling — it’s about a chimpanzee’s fascinating journey through the complex jungle of human life.”
That said, as recently as this month, Waititi was still speaking of the film as if it still might happen. “That script has been around for a long time, and it’s a little bit stuck in the early stages of trying to figure out what it could be and what it would look like,” he told Deadline. “It’s a fucking brilliant script, though. It’s so cool to look at the idea of telling a story like this through the eyes of a chimpanzee.”
There’s always a chance someone else might try to revive Bubbles a few years from now. But as of today, Bubbles is dead.
