Joseph Fiennes to portray Michael Jackson in a 9/11 road trip drama

The only thing stranger than Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando renting a car and driving across the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is actor Joseph Fiennes portraying Jackson in a made-for-TV movie about the alleged road trip.

The Brit will star alongside Stockard Channing as Taylor and Brian Cox as Brando in the special for the U.K.'s Sky Arts channel, The Guardian reports. The idea for the program came from a 2011 Vanity Fair piece — as the story goes, Taylor and Brando were invited by Jackson to attend his concert at Madison Square Garden. After the Sept. 11 attacks, when all flights were grounded, the trio decided to rent a car and drive back to California. "They actually got as far as Ohio — all three of them, in a car they drove themselves," a former employee of Jackson told the magazine. One of Taylor's assistants told Vanity Fair the story wasn't true, and that the actress stayed behind in New York, spending time visiting Ground Zero and praying.

Viewers can expect "a fun, lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek road trip of what celebrity of that kind is like," Fiennes said. "But also it's rather beautiful and poignant about their relationships."

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