It sure sounds like Antoine Fuqua did not enjoy his time directing “Michael.” Hey, at least the film is looking at an incredible $95–100M opening this weekend. This movie will cement Fuqua as a bankable studio director.
That said, The Hot Mic’s Jeff Sneider has a rather juicy story about Fuqua’s time spent on the set of “Michael.” We had already gotten some tidbits last year, but now Sneider is expanding on it with an update that, quite frankly, makes a lot of sense given the tumultuous production of the film.
So goes the rumor: during the 2024 shoot of “Michael,” the overprotective Jackson family and their reps would often visit the set and were “somewhat difficult to deal with during production,” which led to Fuqua escaping the set to direct remotely from his van, in hiding from the Jackson clan. This earned Fuqua the nickname “Vantoine” from multiple crew members on set.
Reps for “Vantoine” did respond to Sneider’s emails, saying the filmmaker has always preferred directing from a van rather than being on set. The only other instance of van directing I could find was on “The Guilty,” which was shot in November 2020 during the pandemic, which only happened because he had to quarantine after exposure to COVID
Furthermore, Fuqua apparently exited “Michael” in 2025, a year prior to its release, when those costly $50M reshoots were occurring over the course of 22 days. Fuqua was not actively involved as the director, which led to producer Graham King taking over to finalize the film. Interestingly, the same thing happened on the set of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which had King, who also produced that music biopic, handling directing reins after Bryan Singer disappeared and was later fired.
Meanwhile, Sneider’s source alleges that Fuqua remained attached to the project in a public capacity and was effectively paid to “shut up and promote the movie” despite his departure from the actual production work.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, as there were significant creative compromises made on “Michael,” including the removal of the film’s entire third act, which reportedly covered the molestation allegations and footage of Michael Jackson’s arrest. The reshoots ended up ballooning the film’s budget to $200M.
Yet all this chaos has resulted in what will likely become the most successful film of Fuqua’s career. His other directorial credits include “Training Day,” “Tears of the Sun,” “King Arthur,” “Brooklyn’s Finest,” “Olympus Has Fallen,” “Southpaw,” “Emancipation,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and “The Guilty.”