Fans arrive to buy tickets for the L.A. showing of 'This Is It'. (AP)

Last March, when Michael Jackson announced plans for his historic 50-concert series in London, he kept emphasizing the significance of its name.

“This Is It,” the King of Pop said, in a voice a lot deeper and more certain than his usual coy stage whisper. “I mean it — This Is It.”

Oh, Michael. This isn’t anywhere close to being it.

This week, I watched as fans in Los Angeles lined up days early to buy tickets for a documentary, also called This Is It, put together from footage of rehearsals for the would-be concerts.

The movie won’t be out until Oct. 28, but there were people camping out, as they might for a Harry Potter or Star Wars movie, or for an actual Michael Jackson show.

Meanwhile, Michael, as he has been ever since his shocking death June 25, is everywhere.

His voice, taped in interviews with celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach for a failed book project, talks of savage beatings at the hands of his father and how Madonna is not a nice person.

I saw his face on T-shirts and on mannequins in the windows of at least three stores on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road last weekend, as if Billie Jean had been released yesterday.

And as I write this, two cute, non-singing children are butchering the Jackson 5’s ABC at a wedding reception on General Hospital (which, synergistically, is on ABC.)

It’s nice that people are remembering what an amazing performer he was, apart from the sad circus his life and the publicity surrounding it had become. But how long does public mourning and remembrance continue before there has to be something new to say, something more than “This guy died and we’re gonna miss him”? Then again, I guess it’s worked OK for Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley.

So if Elvis is any example, I can’t help but wonder about the irony of that phrase, “This Is It,” because, as I said, it’s not. And realistically, it was never going to be.

I think that the “It” Michael was talking about was touring. It’s known that the concerts, if they had happened, would have meant a huge, unspeakable pile of cash for everyone involved, including the singer, production company AEG, everybody Michael owed money to, the city of London, and every enterprising soul with a T-shirt press, a hot dog truck, falafel-making equipment and some place to set up near the shows.

The series’ success would not only have returned the singer to the black, financially, but it would have settled the question of whether his act was a piece of hoary nostalgia or something eternal. (I want to believe it would have been the latter.)

The question, then, is what would have happened after the shows were over? I expect that had Michael Jackson returned to artistic and financial glory, he’d have made some more music, because he was arguably the world’s greatest showman, and if people had demanded it, he’d have risen to it.

I also imagine that the usual group of hangers-on that surface when someone regains his or her glitter would have popped up — I wonder if Boteach, whose motives I’m curious about, would have tried to release those interviews if Michael were still alive, for instance.

But mostly, I wonder what Jackson, who was a perfectionist, according to everyone I’ve ever interviewed that knew him, would have thought of this movie. I’m pretty sure he was planning to release a concert film after the shows were done, because everyone does.

But knowing from firsthand accounts what a stickler he was for making everything as fantastic as it could have been, I wonder if he’d want the rehearsals out there, without him being able to approve the final footage and put his Michael spin on it. Would he have wanted this, his shining moment and his ticket back to the current spotlight, to happen like this?

I guess we’ll never know. And we don’t know where it’s all going to end. Actually, it probably won’t, meaning that it will never really be “It.”