British actor Joseph Fiennes has been cast as iconic African-American pop star Michael Jackson in an upcoming TV comedy, provoking scorn on social media and fuelling a controversy in the entertainment industry over opportunities for black artists.

Fiennes, who is white, will play the late King of Pop in an apparently real-life story for Britain’s satellite TV channel Sky Arts about a road trip across the US the singer is said to have taken in 2001 with movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

Sky Arts said that the 30-minute comedy, called Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, is “part of a series of comedies about stories from arts and cultural history”.

News of the casting decision came two weeks after the omission of any actors of colour from the 2016 Oscar nominations for a second year that led Will Smith and Spike Lee to shun the Oscar ceremony in February and Oscar organisers to bring more women and people of colour into their ranks.

I say Denzel Washington plays Elvis in the next movie just to be fair

Stereo Williams, an entertainment writer for The Daily Beast, said the casting of Fiennes was a “symptom of Hollywood’s deep-seated race problem.”

“They seriously couldn’t find a black actor to play Michael Jackson?” tweeted US civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, a member of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“So Joseph Fiennes (A WHITE DUDE!) is gunna play Michael Jackson... I say Denzel Washington plays Elvis in the next movie just to be fair,” said @nicomadden on Twitter.

So-called “whitewashing” has become a contentious issue in the movie and TV industry, highlighted by the casting of Emma Stone as a character of Hawaiian and Asian heritage in the 2015 film Aloha, and the choice of white British actor Charlie Hunnam to interpret a Mexican-American drug lord in an upcoming Hollywood movie.

Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon is expected to be broadcast sometime in 2016.