The Thriller music video premiered on MTV on December 2, 1983. At 13 minutes and 42 seconds, it was longer than most short films of its era and roughly four times the length of a standard music video. It cost approximately $500,000 to produce — an unheard-of figure for a music video in 1983 — and was funded in part by pre-selling rights to a behind-the-scenes documentary called The Making of Thriller, which went on to become the best-selling music VHS of all time.
Michael personally approached director John Landis after watching An American Werewolf in London (1981) on a flight. He wanted the same makeup artist (Rick Baker), the same level of practical effects, and the same willingness to commit to genuine horror rather than playing it for camp. Landis agreed on the condition that the project be treated as a real short film, with a full screenplay, professional lighting, and a theatrical release before any television broadcast.
Production took roughly four weeks. The graveyard sequence was filmed at the Palace Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The zombie choreography, designed by Michael Peters (who had also choreographed Beat It), required four full days of rehearsal with 30 dancers in full prosthetic makeup. Michael himself sat for roughly four hours each shooting day while Rick Baker's team applied the werecat transformation makeup.
The video's cultural impact is impossible to overstate. The choreography from the graveyard scene is still being learned at weddings, flash mobs and Halloween parties in every country on earth. The Making of Thriller VHS, released in late 1983, sold over nine million copies worldwide. Thriller the album, which had already been on the Billboard charts for a year by that point, returned to number one and stayed there for the bulk of 1984.