Michael Jackson: The Saga Continues

Curiouser and curiouser.

We don't mean Alice in Wonderland--we're talking Michael in Neverland, and the latest chapter in Jackson's ongoing career suicide mission, er, media battle.

Just days after the pop oddity slammed a British-made, ABC-broadcast documentary for misrepresenting him comes word that Jackson was a no-show for a weekend interview with 60 Minutes.

Ed Bradley, an anchor for the CBS show, arrived at Jackson's Neverland Ranch Saturday for an interview producers hoped to air Sunday. But Jackson and his minions apparently nixed the interview at the last, um, minute.

In the one-on-one, Jackson was supposedly going to address the footage featured in the two-hour 20/20 special last Thursday from British journalist Martin Bashir. (That show, incidentally, was seen by a whopping 27.1 million viewers and claimed the title of most watched for the week.)

Bashir got the father of three to admit that he sometimes shares a bed with kid visitors to his ranch, among other revelations that portrayed the onetime King of Pop in an unfavorable light.

Jackson claims Bashir pasted footage together to present a distorted picture of the entertainer's life and also says the journalist ambushed him with questions about a 1993 child molestation allegation. Jackson says he has his own outtakes from the interview sessions, shot by one of his employees, that will vindicate him. The Jackson-sanctioned version of events will air February 20 on Fox.

Titled Michael Jackson, Take Two: The Interview They Wouldn't Show You, the two-hour gem will feature Jackson's personal footage from the Bashir interview, which he claims will tell the "real truth" about his life. "Your relationship with your children is spectacular," Bashir says on the tape, adding it almost makes him "weep" when he sees how caring Jackson is with his kids.

The Fox show will also include glowing reports on the star and his relationships with children from people like ex-wife Debby Rowe, mother of the singer's two oldest kids.

That announcement may or may not have put the kibosh on the 60 Minutes interview.

Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes' executive producer, says the show had not yet reached a full agreement for the interview when Bradley flew to West Coast and doesn't know quite why the Q&A didn't happen. "They weren't ready to do anything right now," he said, "and whether they will at some point remains to be seen."

Sources close to the story say Jackson may have skipped that TV sit down because of damning court documents that emerged over the weekend on The Smoking Gun Website that contained explicit details of the singer's alleged 1993 sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy. "It all got shut down because of this stuff that came out," the source told the New York Post.

Jackson, who was never charged with any crime, has since released a statement calling the publishing of the boy's affidavit a violation of a confidentiality agreement signed by both parties after the singer agreed to settle the case. Jackson says the court papers were leaked out to "further sully" his character. "Whoever is now leaking this material is showing as much disregard for [the boy] as they are determination to attack Michael," Jackson's camp said in the statement.

With 60 Minutes dissed, that means CBS is the only Big Four network that won't air a special on the singer during February sweeps. Even before ABC won the bidding war for Bashir's documentary and Fox landed Jacko's video rebuttal, NBC had a Dateline exposé in the works on the singer, including plastic surgeon analysis of Jackson's ever-morphing face and an interview with the detective who investigated the child-abuse charges. That hourlong special, titled Michael Jackson Unmasked, is slated to air next Monday at 10 p.m.

For those who still haven't quite gotten their Gloved One fix after that will have yet another opportunity to catch him again soon.

The Hollywood Reporter claims a made-for-cable Jackson biopic, focusing on his younger years and not, presumably, on the last several years of surgical mask-wearing drama, has been in the works for several months. One studio exec says the movie, which will air on the USA Network a year from now, will look at both the musical talents and complex personal life of the star.

Meanwhile, the King of Pop's fans are not willing to let him go down without a fight, or a least a cheering section. A group of Michael lovers gathered Tuesday at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a vigil showing their support.