EXCLUSIVE: James Goldston has been front and centre of two of the biggest Michael Jackson documentaries of all time.
Goldston’s Candle True Stories indie spotlighted Jackson in last month’s Michael Jackson: The Verdict, 23 years after he exec-produced ITV’s Living with Michael Jackson, which proved to be one of the catalysts behind the late superstar first being charged with seven counts of child molestation and two counts of intoxicating a minor with alcohol.
“I was reluctant to revisit it for a long time,” Goldston told Deadline as Candle True Stories, which is backed by Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs’ Candle Media, passes its third birthday. “It was an incredible experience the first time around but as we came up to the 20th anniversary we looked back at the trial and thought the world has changed so much and people’s attitudes to celebrity have changed so much that it merited looking again at the aftermath. From a journalistic standpoint we thought there was actually something to say now.”
This notion of having “something to say” drives all of Candle True Stories’ work, Goldston and his development chief Miranda Peters tell us.
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Living with Michael Jackson certainly had something to say back then. Hosted by Martin Bashir, the disgraced Princess Diana interviewer who deceptively obtained those famous words “there were three of us in this marriage,” Living with Michael Jackson followed the late superstar for almost a year at Neverland Ranch, discussing his family, unhappy childhood, plastic surgery and relationships with children. Several months after its premiere, Jackson was charged with the nine counts, although he was acquitted of all in 2005.
That 2005 trial, more than 20 years on, was spotlighted in Netflix’s The Verdict, which just landed on the streamer, hitting the top 10 in multiple territories around the world. The docuseries tracks the 2005 case over its 12-week run, including interviews with jurors, eyewitnesses, journalists who covered the proceedings, and individuals connected to both the prosecution and defense, while incorporating archive footage to reconstruct events.
Having spent so long 20 years ago with Jackson, who passed away in 2009, Goldston said it was a “strange sensation” to examine the trial in such minute detail for The Verdict, which was the most-watched documentary of the first half of 2026.
The doc came out a few weeks after Lionsgate’s Michael biopic tore up the box office. The movie, which starred Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in the titular role, has in some quarters been accused of being sanitized, which Peters said in some senses helped the doc act as a companion piece.
One interesting thing about Jackson’s legacy, she noted, is the complex response from his fans, which can itself elicit controversy.
“In some households and some generations he’s cancelled and others are like, ‘His music is incredible and we still love him’,” said Peters. “You walk through Soho and his theater production has queues going around the corner. His estate is still making vast amounts of money. So it was just a huge story to dive into and the level of controversy probably brought a lot of viewers to the documentary.”
Goldston didn’t reveal the extent to which the Jackson estate took umbrage with his company’s doc, but noted: “Telling stories about the most famous people in the world always throws up challenges.”
Those “challenges” are relished by Goldston and his small team of docmakers at Candle True Stories, which launched three years ago and shares a stable with the likes of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook in Candle Media. Goldston, who has known Mayer and Staggs for decades from their days working at Disney, simply said they “let their business leaders run their businesses” and take a hands-off approach to the day to day.
Returning to ABC’s ‘20/20‘ franchise
uSince launch, Candle True Stories, which is based out of New York and London, has been moving rapidly, making docs for Netflix, Paramount+, The CW, the BBC and CNN. It just landed one of its biggest, Disney+‘s UK version of ABC News‘ hugely popular 20/20 true crime strand.
Goldston is a U.S.-based Brit and current affairs vet who is all too familiar with 20/20, having spent 17 years with ABC News and seven as President before exiting in 2021. He therefore knows the value of 20/20, a near-50-year-old brand that has explored some of the most explosive true crime cases in American history.
Candle True Stories already has experience in the area with The CW’s Crime Nation and Goldston revealed the indie won a tender process to produce the UK version, which is titled 20/20 Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations. He hopes the six-episode first run can become something akin to a franchise and says the show comes amid an “aggressive” true crime expansion from Disney+ EMEA, which has been splasing the cash of late.
“It’s been a great full circle experience coming back to work with 20/20,” said Goldston. “We have taken some of the most talked about true crime events in the UK, applying our philosophy of asking, ‘Are there people who haven’t spoken before and is there something new to say about this?’.”
With that in mind, Candle True Stories has for one of the eps interviewed Kerry Needham, mother of Ben Needham, a young boy who was abducted from the Greek island of Kos in the early 1990s and never found. The story draws parallels with Madeleine McCann and while ITV has “covered it in some capacity” over the years, Peters told us it has never been “told as a premium doc,” with Kerry Needham giving a “very honest and raw account.”
Another ep will spotlight Jane Andrews, the Duchess of York’s former aide and dresser who was convicted of murder and recently profiled in an ITV drama from the producer of The Crown. Showcasing its range, a different Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations ep tells the story of Mahek Bukhari, a TikTok influencer who murdered her mother’s lover and his friend in a high-speed car chase.
“What they all share in their DNA is that there is something they say now,” Goldston said, “a reason to revisit them and bring a contemporary lens to them.”
Britain’s Most Notorious Crime Investigations will join a growing Candle True Stories slate that has also featured documentaries about the early days of Twitter (now X) for the BBC and CNN – “It was interesting to wind the clock back to the idealism that accompanied the launch and how so much went wrong,” Peters said – and the popstar Carter family for Paramount+. The latter, Goldston said, was “viewed as very tabloid and we made it into a human story.”
Goldston and Peters refuse to deem “tabloid” a dirty word and say their work is more than a touch populist.
“Tabloid isn’t bad, it can be good, it is popular,” said Peters. “James has always been unashamedly populist in his storytelling.”
Goldston says the “scrappy” UK documentary DNA, where it “pays to get your hands dirty,” has helped shape this approach.
When Candle True Stories was greenlit by Netflix to tell the story of Scotland’s vanishing cyclist, which became the popular Should I Marry a Murderer?, they had this in mind and wanted to use the opportunity to showcase how everything they make is for a global audience.
“The way we told it and the Harry Potter appeal of really bringing to life the beauty of Scotland where quite a lot of tourists tend to go if they come to the UK wasn’t overlooked,” added Peters. “If it had been a smaller story in [the English seaside town of] Weston-super-Mare maybe we would have had more difficulty. As far as I’m aware Netflix hadn’t told the Scottish story and that had big appeal. Moving forward they are definitely saying to us, ‘Bring us more stories about the UK nations’.”
Candle True Stories will only be so happy to oblige. For now, Peters is enjoying the company’s “new kid on the block” status, which comes as other, bigger rivals “slightly reframe themselves.”
“We want to grow in the right way and grow for success,” concluded Goldston.
