Michael Jackson was $500 million in debt when he died, new court documents reveal

Since then, the executors have made his estate profitable again, according to court documents filed this week.

Pop star Michael Jackson was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt at the time of his death, according to court documents filed this week in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by Entertainment Weekly.

The petition was filed by attorney John Branca and A&R executive John McClain, the executors of Jackson's estate, who are seeking legal authorization to pay various legal firms for services they provided to the estate from July through December 2018. In doing so, their petition provides many details about the nature of Jackson's assets before and since his death.

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"The Executors have faced extraordinarily challenging circumstances," the petition reads. "Among other issues, at the time of Michael Jackson’s death, Michael Jackson’s most significant assets were subject to more than $500 million of debt and creditors’ claims, with some of the debt accruing interest at extremely high interest rates, and some debt in default."

Jackson was also in the middle of preparing a massive musical comeback at the time of his death. Extensive preparations for his planned This Is It residency added costs to his financial resources.

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Michael Jackson. 

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVE/GETTY 

But since Jackson's death in 2009, the executors have achieved quite a turnaround for his holdings. They claim in the new filing that they "have resolved virtually all of the creditors’ claims and litigation, and have successfully solidified the MJJ business as a significant entity in the music industry."

Some of this comes from the estate buying a stake in EMI Music Publishing (including the rights to Motown classics and songs by Carole King and Norah Jones) for $50,000 in 2012, and then selling it to Sony for $300 million in 2018. Because of this and other successes, Branca and McClain are seeking court authorization to compensate various law firms for more than $3 million in total for services provided that year.

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The Jackson estate has made other gains in recent years too, like the Tony-winning Broadway sensation MJ the Musical. There is also a biopic film, Michael, in the works from director Antoine Fuqua, starring Jackson's nephew Jaafar Jackson in the lead role. At CinemaCon earlier this year, Fuqua promised that "the movie will get into all of it" — including, perhaps, the accusations of sexual abuse leveled against Jackson over the years.

Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who detailed their accusations against Jackson in the 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, have been granted a jury trial against Jackson's estate and companies. Though Jackson is dead, Robson and Safechuck allege that his staff were complicit in both their abuse and for covering it up afterward. The estate denies any wrongdoing and claims the accusations against Jackson are false.