‘Michael’ Has Already Moonwalked Past $700 Million and It’s Not Done Yet

Few musical biopics in Hollywood history have generated the kind of anticipation that surrounded ‘Michael’, Antoine Fuqua’s sweeping portrait of the King of Pop. The film traces Michael Jackson’s early life from his days as the lead of the Jackson 5 through to the Bad tour of the late 1980s, with Jackson’s own nephew, Jaafar Jackson, stepping into the role in his acting debut. The casting choice alone set the internet ablaze long before a single frame reached theaters, and the finished product has proven equally impossible to ignore.

Distributed domestically by Lionsgate and internationally by Universal, ‘Michael’ carries a production price tag estimated near $200 million, making it one of the most expensive biopics ever assembled. Reshoots in June 2025 were required after a clause in a legal settlement forced the removal of any references to the 1993 child sexual abuse allegations against Jackson, with the third act revised accordingly. The production challenges only seemed to fuel public curiosity rather than dampen it.

When the film opened on April 24, the numbers were staggering. It launched to a record-smashing $97.2 million domestically and $121.6 million internationally, for a global opening of $218.8 million, marking the biggest debut ever for any biopic and the largest worldwide opening for a music biopic in history. Now, in its fourth weekend, ‘Michael’ has reclaimed the top spot at the domestic box office, earning $26 million and pushing its North American total to $283 million while its global haul has surged past $703.8 million.

The milestone positions ‘Michael’ as a serious contender to surpass ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s’ $911 million worldwide tally and become the highest-grossing music biopic in cinema history. It has already powered past the third highest-grossing music biopic, Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’, which concluded its run at just over $288 million globally. The fact that Japan, where Jackson’s fanbase is enormous, does not open the film until June 12 means there is still significant box office fuel left in the tank.

The commercial triumph arrives despite a sharp divide between critics and audiences. Professional reviewers have largely been cold on the film, landing it a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 39%, while audiences have responded with near-platinum exit scores and remarkable weekend-to-weekend retention. It took just three weekends for the film to earn back more than two and a half times its reported budget, the general threshold studios use to declare a film profitable after accounting for theater splits and publicity costs.

For Lionsgate, the scale of this success is historic, representing the studio’s biggest hit in more than a decade and placing it among their all-time highest earners alongside the ‘Hunger Games’ franchise. Industry projections now place the film’s final worldwide total somewhere between $700 million and $850 million, with more optimistic estimates suggesting a run toward $1 billion if international markets like Japan and South Korea hold strong.

With Jaafar Jackson drawing comparisons to his legendary uncle both in movement and presence, and a global audience clearly hungry for this kind of celebration, the film’s trajectory feels far from over. Whether you think ‘Michael’ deserved the critical cold shoulder or believe audiences got it right all along, drop your take in the comments below.