Bad Robot boards Michael Jackson drama

J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions has become a coproducer on a Warner Bros. Television event series about the late pop star Michael Jackson.

Bar Robot will join Warner and Smiley Television & Film as a copro partner of the adaptation of Before You Judge Me: The Triumph and Tragedy of Michael Jackson’s Last Days, which publishes tomorrow.

The trio are already working on an adaptation of another Tavis Smiley title, Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Final Year, which published in 2014.

The Jackson event series, announced last year, is a novelistic interpretation of the singer’s final period of life, before his death in June 2009.

Abrams (Star Wars Episode VII) and Bad Robot’s head of television, former BBC drama chief Ben Stephenson, will now executive produce alongside Smiley’s David Brewington. No writer or broadcaster is yet attached.

Smiley brought the title to Warner last year through an existing pod deal, while Bad Robot is also based at Warner Bros. TV. Smiley and Warner are also working up My Journey With Maya, which tells the story of Tavis Smiley’s 30-year-friendship with poet and activist Maya Angelou.