Michael Jackson Was Almost Doctor Who And …. What?!?!
By Sundi Rose
Yup. You read that right. Michael Jackson came pretty close to being cast in a movie version of Doctor Who and all our minds are completely blown.
File this bit of news under “things we never thought we’d hear.” Michael Jackson was super close to becoming the Doctor in an American movie way back in 1988. We know. It sounds weird now with Doctor Who earning as much success stateside as in Britain. But this could have turned out to be the perfect thing for the franchise at the time.
The Hollywood Reporter brought the Jackson/Doctor connection to readers in 2013. This was long after the reinvented Doctor Who series reentered the popular culture in 2005. The magazine quotes a book that names Jackson as a possible Doctor. The book written by Charles Norton, Now on the Big Screen: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who at the Cinema cites Jackson as a frontrunner for the role in 1988.
Photo: Amazon
It’s really not that that crazy of a thought, really. In 1989, just a year after Paramount was kicking the idea around, Doctor Who went off the air in the U.K. It didn’t bubble back up until much later, when Christopher Eccleston reprised the role in 2005. There was an ill-fated FOX pilot, Who, that failed pretty miserably. Otherwise, the Whoniverse fell pretty quiet in the years in between. Who knows what a Jackson Doctor could have done for the franchise?
The popstar was no stranger to science fiction himself, having starred in his own movie, Moonwalker. Of course, “movie” is a bit of an overstatement. It wasn’t so much as a movie as it was just a collection of videos. But I’m not here to split hairs. According to Radio Times, Jackson was “quite keen” to take the role.
Norton, the book’s author, drops another casting bomb, saying Bill Cosby was the runner up for the role. Now THAT’S a surprising choice, if we ever heard one. And we’ve heard some pretty far-fetched casting stories.
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Looking back, I guess it’s a good thing the American Doctor Who movie didn’t really take off, considering the dubious legacy of it’s would be stars. All hope is not lost. We’re still holding out hope for that Doctor Who movie that the Sony leaks promised us back in 2015.