Director charged over Jackson pedophilia hits back at singer, family, estate

Director Dan Reed is slamming a series of statements put forward by Michael Jackson's family and the pop icon's estate in the wake of the Sundance premiere of Reed's documentary Leaving Neverland, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

After the estate called his film "a tabloid character assassination" and insisted it "isn't a documentary" while the family called him and the film's two accusers "opportunists," Reed sat down with The Hollywood Reporter in Park City to defend his work, which received a standing ovation from the visibly shaken audience members at its festival screening on Friday (Sundance stationed mental health workers in the lobby for anyone who needed help processing the film).

"It is a four-hour documentary by an experienced documentarian with a long track record in investigation and telling complex stories and this is a complex story," says Reed. "So I'd say it's beyond doubt a documentary. Anyone with any knowledge of that form would recognize a documentary. A four-hour piece, is that a tabloid? I didn't characterize Jackson at all in the film — I think if you watch it you'll have noticed that it's a story about these two families and Jackson is an element of that story. But I don't seek to characterize him at all. I don't comment on Jackson. It's not a film about Michael. ... The film itself is an account of sexual abuse, how sexual abuse happens and then how the consequences play out later in life."

The film follows two adult accusers — Wade Robson and James Safechuck — as they recount their relationship with the so-called King of Pop. Robson, now 36, says in the movie that he was molested by Jackson from the ages of 7 to 14 and chronicles the alleged abuse in graphic detail. Safechuck, who appeared as a child alongside Jackson in one of the most iconic Pepsi ads of all time, says he was sexually abused by the singer beginning at the age of 10. His story also is told in painstaking detail.