I feel like some fans are working themselves up over assumptions and hypotheticals, which imo is very weird and kinda unreasonable. There is a VERY fine line between “the estate is cheap and cuts corners which harms their relationship with MJ’s collaborators” and “the estate doesn’t care to regain ownership of material they don’t have.” I’m not even defending them here, it’s just odd.
MJ wasn’t the most contentious with his archival work, and films from the 20th century are lost consistently. Until we hear something that actually flat-out suggests negligence in this case, I’m just gonna presume laziness and conservative spending on the estate’s part.
Well… the assumptions and opinions about the estate are definitely a result of their behavior the last 16 years. It’s actually very sad that most of us think it’s more possible that the estate is lying to us rather than them really not having access to the reels.