Wade Robson's Ill-fated Directing Career and the Allegations
"I spend most of my time saying no to jobs, probably to my own demise..." -Wade Robson, 2009
The year was 2008. Wade Robson was in the midst of choreographing several dance routines for Criss Angel's forthcoming Vegas show, BELIEVE. "It's going to be amazing. The dancers are ready." (BELIEVE was sharply criticized by attendees and the media in the weeks following its début.) At the same time, Wade was busy reprising his two-time Emmy award-winning role on So You Think You Can Dance, serving as a judge, choreographer and occasional performer. All seemed well.
Internally however, Wade was experiencing a riveting career crisis. Despite being a successful dancer and choreographer, it had been Wade's lifelong aspiration to become a respected film director; a desire strengthened by his wife Amanda who had expressed similar desires in writing and film. "I became interested in film directing, really young, like eight or nine. I was interested in behind the scenes. I wanted to be the one who created it," Wade explained in an April 2009 issue of Dance Informa.
From the mid-2000s onward, Wade and his wife Amanda began putting their ideas on paper. Wade directed and starred in several high-octane commercials, including a couple promoting his own line of shoes distributed by gendance. In addition, Wade directed and choreographed two music videos, one featuring AJ McLean ("Teenage Wildlife") and another featuring two dancers from the BELIEVE show ("Burning Room").
Wade and Amanda successfully produced two other short films. One, a 17-minute film known as I? (pronounced 'I Question Mark'), revolves around a child dancer who becomes paralysed after an vehicle accident. I? was quietly screened at various film festivals to a sparse audience; the music track Wade produced for it was later included on his Dance ***** compilation disc and received greater appreciation. This was Wade's most extensive directorial release.
The second short film, WITHIN, was filmed and quietly released on Wade Robson's website in 2007. Starring Aminah Abdul Jillil, the film features a pulsating soundtrack and an elemental blend of chaos and relaxation. Both Wade and Amanda share credits for devising the concept, with Wade acting as the director and Amanda the writer. Of particular note, over half of this film contains footage shot at Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, February 2007, to portray a blissful and meditative environment. Wade and his wife stayed at one of Michael Jackson's guest cottages and thanked Michael Jackson in the end credits: "Wade & Amanda Robson would like to thank... MJ, for allowing us to use his sacred land. Grace, for making it happen."
Following in the footsteps of these short films, Wade and Amanda quickly escalated their efforts in the realm of film writing and directing, making the endeavour their utmost priority. Eventually, such ambition would culminate with the failed attempt at creating a feature length film and theatrical production, at the expense of Wade's professional career and many lost opportunities. "The focus is to really start this film work and there may be stage work, but it will be ours. We are writing a theatre show as well."
While Wade juggled multiple projects in 2008—notably Criss Angel's Cirque du Soleil show and So You Think You Can Dance—his wife was busy drafting their film's script at home. "We have been writing [the film] all through [2008] as well, but Amanda was mostly working on it because I was doing the Cirque show. So it was kind of really broken and hard to really focus on it." (Amanda had also dabbled into selling bouquets in a side business she called AmaLei Bouquets; a single page website was conceived and a domain name was purchased, but both were shortly lived.)
In early 2009, Wade foreshadowed the impending destruction of his choreographing career in an interview with Dance Informa: "We were supposed to do this Britney tour but it was just another distraction and we really want to move into film and really make this the next path for us... I spend most of my time saying no to jobs, probably to my own demise..." (Wade and Amanda were initially selected to direct Britney Spears' Circus tour, but were subsequently replaced). At this point, Wade and Amanda were determined to let nothing get in their way of their new passion in film.
In 2003, coinciding with Michael Jackson's birthday, Wade filed the legal work to establish an Encino-based motion picture company, "Light Tree Productions" (separate from Wade's "Wajero Entertainment" business he founded several years prior). The business establishment remained actively licensed but dormant. In early 2009, when Wade and Amanda decided to put all of their combined concentration into directing and writing, Wade reflected the change under his linkedIn profile by listing his current employment status as CEO and Film Director of Light Tree Productions.
In 2009, after more than a year of continual work on their conceptual film's script, Wade stated that it was his intent to start shooting the film later that year: "...it's five days a week, as soon as we wake up until the sun comes down. That's what we're doing all day, every day. We're just making a move to get this done." Apart from the sporadic tasks that Wade involved himself with from 2009 onward—including writing a touching tribute to Michael Jackson in Opus after he passed away and collaborating with Janet Jackson on a Michael Jackson tribute at the VMAs—Wade and Amanda's concentration remained steadfast on their planned film projects.
Months passed. The Robsons continued working behind-the-scenes on their first feature film and related self-projects, all the while admittedly turning away many potential opportunities that had come their way. Wade and his wife were replaced by Jamie King for Britney Spears' Circus tour. The untitled film that had consumed years of the Robsons' lives never materialized. The theatrical play that Wade mentioned in interviews likewise remained little more than a figment in the mind's eye.
In December 2010, still focused on his newfound filmmaking career path, Wade accepted a job to direct the fourth installment of a dance film series, Step Up Revolution. In April of 2011, Wade abruptly withdrew from the project citing "personal reasons." He was replaced by director Scott Speer. Three months later, during Pulse on Tour, Wade excitedly explained that he was anticipating working on a new Michael Jackson tribute show: "I'm starting on Cirque du Soleil Michael Jackson show... Which is exciting and terrifying all at the same time because it's such a huge responsibility. But that's why I took it on, because Mike was such a huge part of my career and life. we were friends for 20 years before he passed, since I was seven. So it's an opportunity for me to give back a little bit to his legacy..."
In the end, Wade was never part of either Cirque du Soleil production that paid homage to Michael Jackson. Instead, Jamie King was selected as the writer and director for both. (Wade Robson and Jamie King also share the same talent agency.)
With all of this knowledge now on the table, several connections can be made between Wade's flawed film endeavours and the civil lawsuit that he filed against Michael Jackson in May of 2013. In the complaint, Wade Robson accuses Michael Jackson of prophesying that Wade would "be a film director bigger than Steven Spielberg." As a result of that proclamation, Wade's attorney insists that "as far as Wade was concerned, his fate was written [by Michael Jackson in 1989]." At the same time, Michael Jackson provided additional inspirational words to Wade: "Study the greats and become greater. Be the best or nothing at all. Rule the world. Be in the history books. Immortalize yourself."
The suggestion that Wade and his wife altered their career paths to work on films, specifically as a result of the "prophecy" Michael Jackson made when Wade was six or seven years old, is echoed numerous times throughout the complaint. "In 2011, Wade was hired to direct his first theatrical motion picture, Step Up 4, a dance film with an approximate $30 million budget. It was the start of the culmination of everything he and Michael Jackson had hoped Wade would accomplish—Wade believed Michael Jackson's prophecy about him was coming true." In essence, this is equivalent to a young child reading a fortune cookie passage and adhering literally to it decades into the future, then blaming the fortune cookie's message for any failures or misfortunes that consequently result.
Wade's attorney goes on to explain that Wade dropped out of the big budget directing job "for reasons unknown to him at the time." Wade subsequently conducted months of counselling between a psychologist and psychotherapist—over the course of an entire year—before coming up with the notion that his career must have faltered as a result of alleged sexual abuse in conjunction with the failed prophecy from decades past. Again, Wade attributes his nervous breakdowns and career hiatus on "the result of a complete psychological collapse arising from the fulfilment of a 'prophecy' made by Michael Jackson to Wade Robson that Robson would one day direct films..."
What is not mentioned in the complaint is how Wade was ambitiously discussing plans to work on a Michael Jackson tribute show by Cirque du Soleil several months after dropping out of the big budget production (one could reasonably speculate that Wade may have dropped out of the Step Up film under the belief that he would instead be part of the Michael Jackson tribute tour that was being prepared at the same time). Furthermore, not once does the complaint so much as mention Wade and Amanda's other ill-conceived film and theatre plans that they both voluntarily invested endless hours and several years trying to create, or how both of them rejected other paid opportunities long before any alleged meltdowns, including working with Britney Spears.
Wade explained in past interviews that he always had a passion for directing and filmmaking, but when such filmmaking plans fell flat and other choreographers like Jamie King took his reign in the choreographing venue, the most sensible explanation in his mind was to cast blame on Michael Jackson for instilling an erroneous belief decades ago that Wade would become a bigger director than Steven Spielberg if he pursued film. So, rather than accepting his failures in the film industry and using such experiences to enhance his otherwise lucrative career, Wade put together a tall tale of claims, using alleged sexual molestation from decades past to mask the underlying "film prophecy" absurdness as the basis for his failed prospects.
