Michael Jackson's Unfulfilled Superhero Ambitions
Sarah Marsh
Published May 17, 2026
By Published Apr 26, 2026, 10:30 AM EDT Derek is the Training Lead for ScreenRant. Before his current position, he spent 20 years working in games, TV, and film while also writing for several entertainment sites.
Derek is also the co-host of three pop culture podcasts: , The Bad Batch, and Watch Men. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
Warning! This post contains mentions of sexual abuse and sexual assault.
Spending the vast majority of his life as a star, Michael Jackson was rarely denied anything he wanted. As , shows, the King of Pop lived a life unlike anyone else in the history of humanity, and created an image of himself that turned him into an almost mythological figure. One who had a monkey for a best friend.
But there was one thing that Michael Jackson wanted but never achieved: he dreamed of being a movie star. The singer tried, and failed, to be cast in a number of now classic films. He tried to get Tim Burton to cast him as the titular character in Edward Scissorhands. He . He begged George Lucas to let him play Jar Jar Binks. Jackson even wanted to get in on the superhero movie game before it really took off by making a Spider-Man movie. And, to pull it off, he tried to buy Marvel Comics.
Michael Jackson Wanted To Be A Marvel Hero
The 1990s were a tough time for Michael Jackson and Marvel Comics. For the comic company, the rise of Image and a series of poor business decisions by Marvel Entertainment Group led to the company going bankrupt in the mid-90s. Around the same time, . Jackson's issues were, obviously, much more serious, but, unlike Marvel, he had the money to make it all, essentially disappear. It helped Jackson that the world didn't want to see him in that light, and so many people just ignored the claims.
Still, Jackson wanted to be seen as a hero, and playing a superhero would, in theory, do that for him. At the time, James Cameron was working on is Spider-Man movie that would fall apart and, perhaps hoping to land the lead role, Jackson came up with a plan to ensure he would at least be in the mix: he would buy Marvel. As Taj Jackson explained on ...
"I remember being with my brothers and him talking about purchasing Marvel. He wanted to do that with Stan Lee. They had been talking and discussing that. Unfortunately that didn't happen, I think they were shut down from doing that. I don't know the reasons why but they were adamantly in the process of doing that."
Taj Jackson went on to suggest who his uncle would want to be in the MCU...
"Besides Spider-Man, he was a huge Marvel fan. He knew all the characters. So it was not only Spider-Man [he wanted to buy]. But yeah, he probably wanted to be Spider-Man."
For one reason or another, the sale never happened, but the beginning of Marvel's cinematic golden age started soon after, with 1998's Blade and 2000's X-Men kicking things off before Sam Raimi set the world on fire with 2002's Spider-Man. It's impossible to know what the world of entertainment would look like today had Jackson bought up Marvel and made - or at least tried to make - a Spider-Man movie starring himself. It seems like a safe bet that superhero movies wouldn't look the same. Chances are, there never would have been a Marvel Cinematic Universe. At least, not the kind that has come into existence.
Michael Jackson Had His Eyes On Another Marvel Character As Well
According to gossip, when the first X-Men movie was being made, Michael Jackson tried to get the role of Professor X. Thankfully, the producers were smart enough to decline Jackson's request and go with . As with Spider-Man, it's impossible to imagine Jackson playing the role. His demeanor and voice just don't match what is known about the founder of the X-Men.
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All the same, by 2008, the golden age of Marvel movies was in full swing with Iron Man hitting theaters. A year later, at age 50, Jackson would die from an overdose of propofol and benzodiazepine. Two months after that, Disney announced their plans to buy Marvel. The rest, as they say, is HIStory (please forgive the pun).
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