Michael Jackson's Thriller (music video) Michael Jackson's Thriller (music video) Michael Jackson's Thriller is a music video for the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". It was directed by John Landis and written by Landis and Jackson. It was released on December 2, 1983, by Columbia Pictures. In the video, Jackson and his girlfriend (played by Ola Ray) are confronted by zombies while walking home from a movie theater. Jackson becomes a zombie and performs a dance routine with a horde of the undead. The video references numerous horror films. Jackson contacted Landis after seeing his film "An American Werewolf in London." The pair conceived a short
Michael Jackson for every album sold, and was making record-breaking profits from sales of his recordings. The videocassette of the documentary "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller" sold over 350,000 copies in a few months. The era saw the arrival of novelties such as dolls modeled after Jackson, which appeared in stores in May 1984 at a price of $12. Biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli writes that ""Thriller" stopped selling like a leisure item—like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie—and started selling like a household staple." In 1985, "The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller" won a Grammy for Best Music