John Branca

  John Branca Tales of John Branca’s business acumen are plentiful. How he turned  Michael Jackson ’s over-budget “Thriller” music video production into a lucrative behind-the-scenes documentary. How he secured for Jackson the coveted  Beatles  publishing catalog. How he helped Jackson purchase Neverland ranch for $40 million less than the asking price. How 10 years after Jackson’s death, he and the estate’s other executor John McClain — a childhood friend of the Jacksons who went on to manage sister  Janet  ‘s career and was a founding executive at Interscope Records — built the artist’s music catalog into a $570 million asset. Now ,  after HBO’s March airing of filmmaker Dan Reed’s  Leaving Neverland  — with its disturbing and graphic first-person accounts of Jackson’s pedophilia — John Branca, 68, faces a new and arguably much more daunting challenge: protecting Jackson’s legacy and the successful businesses that it fuels from fallout over...