What Happens When Michael Jackson's Music Inspires a Family Drama?

Ladies and gentlemen, the feature film, I’LL BE THERE is about a blended family. The film focuses on Grace, who never had an easy time explaining to her friends about her family.

After the opening scene of Grace and her brothers and sisters as children, the film then finds her more than a decade later, she has built a new life for herself in Los Angeles and cemented her place as the outsider of the family. But her new life is upended when she learns that her older brother AJ has cancer and her now estranged family comes to town to support him.

The film is set during the days after Michael Jackson's death in the Los Angeles hospital that is next door to the L.A. Coroner's Office, where the King of Pop was autopsied. As we unravel the family's traumatic past, the pivotal role AJ played as Grace's protector, and the chasm that now exists between them as adults, Grace comes to terms with the ghosts of her past and her former role as the family's "Golden Child."

Michael Jackson played an important role in the siblings' childhoods and the irony of the timing isn't lost on Grace. As she tries to reconcile her complicated relationships with her siblings, she's also saying goodbye to the icon who was the soundtrack to that chapter of her life.

I loved this film as many people can relate to the dysfunction of a blended family and in this case do they blend at all? But regardless of the ups and downs with siblings, there is an underlying love that never goes away. And for some, it can take decades for that love to rise to the top.

Director/producer Andrew Shea, an award-winning filmmaker who has enjoyed success in film, television and theatre.

In 2019, his film, Buzz, produced in association with Endeavor Content and Peter Berg’s Film 45, premiered on HBO. His films have screened at several of the most prestigious and selective film festivals in the world: the Cannes Film Festival Critics Week, the Sundance Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, DOC NYC, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and SXSW.

Andrew is a professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

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