I hope the biopic is 100% factually accurate. As great as the Bohemian Rhapsody was for me, it wasn’t factually accurate at all times. For example, one of Queen’s biggest songs “We Will Rock You” was written and released in 1977. In the movie, it is shown as being written in 1980. These minor historical inaccuracies aren’t calamitous, but I don’t want the Michael biopic to depict Rock With You to be written in 1982 or something.
I highly doubt it will be 100% accurate. In fact, I can’t think of any biopic that is 100% accurate. It can’t be. You can’t compress however many years into two hours and make it interesting, if it’s exactly the way it happened.
A movie is made to be entertaining, so they have to create a story which the viewer can, in a way, relate to or at the very least be emotionally invested in. So, you can’t prioritize facts in this case, since it isn’t a documentary.
For example, in Bohemian Rhapsody, the band performs at Live Aid after not having performed in front of an audience in years. This is far from being true because, in reality, they had just done a massive tour for their album The Works.
But here, I’m not bothered by the fact that it isn’t factually accurate because it makes for a much better ending to the story. They had to compress the years in order to show a decline of Freddie and subsequently a moment of glory.
Now, imagine if they had shown everything the way it had happened. The Live Aid thing wouldn’t seem nearly as spectacular because the band had been doing really well for years.
Of course, I'm not saying I want the movie to have tons and tons of inaccuracies. In fact, with Michael, it will be even harder, as a fan, to accept some of the timeline discrepancies, I'm sure. However, if they have to change some small things in order to make a two hour story that is interesting to the general public, then they should. Biopics are made for the general public anyway.