Michael Jackson's This Is It

This Is It is a documentary built from footage shot as Michael Jackson rehearsed for a planned series of concerts at London's O2 Arena. The shows, billed as his return to the stage, were expanded from an initial run to fifty dates after tickets sold out rapidly. Jackson died in June 2009, roughly three weeks before the first performance, and the film was assembled from more than a hundred hours of rehearsal material recorded at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and The Forum in Inglewood. It shows Jackson working through choreography, arrangements and staging with his collaborators, alongside interviews and backstage moments. Kenny Ortega directs and appears on screen, with Jackson, guitarist Orianthi and other members of the production team playing themselves.

The film arrived in 2009, late in a directing career that had moved from the musical Newsies and the comedy Hocus Pocus through the High School Musical television films to a third theatrical installment the year before. Ortega had worked with Jackson before, and shares a screenplay credit with him here. The production was costly by documentary standards and earned far more than it cost worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2/10 from about 43,000 votes, on TMDB 7.4/10 from roughly 1,100 votes, and critics rated it 7.3/10 across 182 reviews, putting audience and press responses closely in line.