In another win for a non-franchise titles, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic pulled off a moon walk for the ages at the worldwide box office with a record-smashing $97 million domestic opening and $120.4 million foreign launch for a global blast-off of $217.4 million.
Michael, coming in nearly $30 million ahead of expectations in North America, boasts the biggest domestic opening of all time for any biopic, and the biggest globally for a music biopic after stealing the show from Universal’s Straight Outta Compton ($60.1 million) andFox’s Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody ($55 million), not adjusted for inflation.
Other milestones: it marks Lionsgate‘s best debut since the pandemic and it’s sixth biggest ever. And it danced past the opening of fellow 2026 box office surprise Hail Project Mary to mark the second-biggest start of the year in North America behind Uni’s Super Mario sequel. (Don’t feel too sorry for Amazon MGM’s Ryan Gosling-led Hail Mary, which celebrated its own milestone in crossing the $300 million mark domestically.)
Endorsed by the Jackson estate, Michael hit a major delay when the decision was made by producer Graham King and Lionsgate to spend tens of millions reworking the third act so as to avoid mention of the allegations of child sexual abuse that engulfed the King of Pop in scandal before his death in 2009. All told, the final budget of $200 million appears worth it. Universal is handling the film overseas on behalf of Lionsgate, save for Japan.
Phenomenal world-of-mouth is more than making up for generally lousy reviews (its Rotten Tomatoes is 40 percent).
By Saturday, it was clear the movie wasn’t just appointment viewing for hard-core fans, and that strong word of mouth is more than making for one of the biggest divides in recent memory between critics and audiences: the film is graced with 97 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes — the best ever for the genre; PostTrak exit scores are in the low 90s and a definite recommend of 85 percent, levels rarely seen. And while It didn’t earn a perfect grade on CinemaScore, but it did earn a good enough A-.
Michael‘s success is a result ofplaying across all ethnicities and age groups. While it did over-index among Black moviegoers (38 percent), Latinos accounted for a sizable 26 percent of the audience, followed by white moviegoers at 26 percent, according to PostTrak.
Overseas — where Jackson is an even bigger draw — Michael is likewise off to a record-breaking start with $120.4 million. It opened in virtually every corner of the globe. One exception is Japan, where Jackson’s fanbase is enormous. (The 2011 Michael Jackson posthumous concert doc This Is It earned $196 million at the foreign office; Japan’s contribution was $57 million).
More to come.
