Riding the crest of a wave following the critical success of Anomalisa, Community creator Dan Harman is poised to remain in the realm of stop-motion animation for his follow-up project, according to Deadline, this time replacing David Thewlis’ introvert with Michael Jackson‘s pet chimp Bubbles.
Producing on behalf of his Starburns Industries production company, Harman has struck a deal with Andrew Kortschak’s End Cue to secure rights to the script. It’s no slouch, either; penned by Isaac Adamson, the screenplay for the proposed biopic landed on Hollywood’s infamous Black List in 2015, indicating that at the very least, Harman has a solid foundation upon which to build a production.
Shedding light on the King of Pop, Adamson’s Michael Jackson biopic differs from its peers in the sense that it won’t tell the story through the lens of Jermaine Jackson, nor will the embryonic pitch document the remainder of The Jackson 5 and their relationship with MJ. Instead, Starburns and End Cue teased that the film will in fact be told from the chimp’s perspective.
Adopted by Michael Jackson during the early 80s, Bubbles was rescued from a Texas research facility and was one of the many chimpanzees the pop icon owned throughout his glittering career. Jackson spent most of those twilight years fending off allegations that he was physically abusive to Bubbles, who currently resides in a Florida animal sanctuary, aged 30.
No director was mentioned with the announcement, indicating that the novel Michael Jackson biopic is currently casting the net in search of a distributor.
