JACKSON REVIEWS POE SCRIPT, PREPARES FOR HIS TELLTALE PART

By Jeannie Williams

From USA Today, 08.15.2000

Michael Jackson has finally seen the script for The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he will play the famous horror writer, who died in 1849. He's enthusiastic about this "very scary" movie, and after his Sony single comes out at Christmas and his new album in January, he'll devote himself full time to preparing for the role.

That's the word from Jackson's co-executive producer, Gary Pudney. "Michael says by the time he's done preparing for this, the audience isn't even going to know it's him, with the major makeup. The new Michael is Michael Jackson, the movie actor. That is what he wants to devote his energies to," Pudney says, adding that the new album could be Jackson's last.

Nightmares isn't a musical, but Jackson will write a song he'll perform over the titles, based on Poe's poetry. He also plans to visit Baltimore sites associated with Poe. The author died in that city.

The script has characters from the writer's works coming back to haunt Poe the last week of his life. It ends with Poe's death, and Jackson gets "a great death scene."

The goal now is finding a director. "Michael had conversations with Steven Spielberg, who is a good friend," Pudney says. "Spielberg was enthusiastic and suggested several people, including Tim Burton, who did Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands."

This is Jackson's first feature film lead role. His only other theatrical release was the 1978 musical The Wiz with Diana Ross. He also starred in Captain Eo, a 3-D space adventure that began showing at Disneyland and Disney World in 1986 and ran for about 10 years.