A year after his death, we’ve seen ‘This Is It’ and heard the leaked songs, but where’s that robot hotel? By Gil Kaufman Michael Jackson Photo: Getty Images In the twilight of his career, Michael Jackson was almost as well known for the projects he never completed as he was for the ones that came to fruition. From the mid-1990s on, fans were frequently tantalized with the promise of movies, theme parks, tours and song collaborations with the day’s hottest music stars that came and went without ever being realized. As the one-year anniversary of Jackson’s death approaches, MTV News is taking a look at the many plans the King of Pop dreamed up before his premature end, some of which are finally becoming reality. Despite more than a decade out of the pop-culture spotlight, Jackson also clearly never stopped having his finger on the pulse of what was going on in music. Lady Gaga recently revealed that Jackson had tapped her to open for his 50-show This Is It stand at the O2 arena in London. “I was actually asked to open for Michael on his tour,” she said. “We were going to open for him at the O2. … And we were working on making it happen. And I suppose there was some talk about the openers doing some duets with Michael onstage.” In fact, one of the choreographers of This Is It said in an interview that not only did Jackson want to have Gaga open for him, he was very interested in recording a song with her before his death. Travis Payne said that after giving Jackson a short list of possible collaborators for his next musical project (including Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Usher and Justin Timberlake), the pop icon suggested Payne check out the then budding superstar Gaga. “He goes, ‘Lady Gaga.’ I go, ‘Really?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ He’s the one who really got me to get into her,” Payne recalled. “He literally told me, ‘You gotta get into her. She’s good.’ So, I started listening to her music more and going on YouTube and looking at her performances, and I was like, ‘He’s right.’ ” Jackson was also clearly looking to take his place among the musical icons he most admired and whose sales records he was determined to break during the course of his career. Just like the Beatles and Elvis Presley, Jackson will be immortalized by Cirque du Soleil with a permanent show in Las Vegas and a touring version in 2011, thanks to an agreement with Jackson’s estate. This brings to fruition a long-held dream for Jackson, who was a big fan of the Canadian troupe’s productions and had discussed mounting a show based on his music several years before his death. Jackson always dreamed big , and toward the end of his life, he spent quite a bit of time in Vegas cooking up another abandoned pie-in-the-sky project. In October 2005, just a few months removed from his acquittal on child molestation charges , Jackson began work with fashion designer Andr
