Michael has officially crossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office, making the Michael Jackson biopic
the first film of its kind to ever hit that number.
The milestone, confirmed over the weekend, caps a record-breaking run for the Lionsgate and Universal release. Michael opened on April 24 to a stunning $97 million domestically and $217 million globally, the biggest opening weekend a musical biopic has ever had. From there it just kept climbing, eventually overtaking 2018's Bohemian Rhapsody ($911 million) as the highest-grossing music biopic ever, then blowing past Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (roughly $977 million) to become the highest-grossing biopic of any kind, in any genre, period. The final tally so far: $371.8 million domestic and $629.8 million internationally, for a global total north of $1.001 billion, and counting.
It's also the very first billion-dollar release in Lionsgate's history, surpassing the studio's previous
record-holder, 2013's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua and produced by Graham King, Michael stars Jaafar Jackson, the pop icon's real-life nephew, in his acting debut as the King of Pop, with Colman Domingo and Nia Long playing his parents Joe and Katherine. The film traces Michael's journey from The Jackson 5 through his solo rise. Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson credited the film's staying power to how audiences
responded, calling it a cultural phenomenon that played out in theaters around the world.
Here's the twist: critics were not on board. Michael is sitting at a rough 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes' critic score, with reviewers largely calling the storytelling too safe. Audiences, on the other hand, gave it a 97 percent Popcornmeter score. That's about as wide a critic-versus-fan gap as you'll find on a movie this size, and it clearly didn't stop anyone from buying tickets, and then buying them again. Repeat viewership is a big part of why the film has maintained its momentum well beyond opening weekend.
But the box office record might not even be the most interesting part of this story. Michael has completely reignited Jackson's music. In the weeks following the film's release, his Spotify monthly listeners jumped from around 62 million to over 102 million, a jump of more than 120 percent year-over-year, the highest streaming audience of his entire career, dead or alive. Thriller re-entered the Billboard 200 at No. 7. By its fourth weekend in theaters, "Billie Jean" had climbed all the way to become the most-streamed song on the planet. Even his younger sister Janet Jackson, who isn't depicted or mentioned anywhere in the film at her own request, has seen a streaming bump just from the renewed interest in her family's catalog.
Add in a digital release that shot straight to No. 1 on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video in June, and
Michael is proving to be a hit in literally every format it touches.
And this might just be chapter one. The film closes on the text "The Story Continues," and Lionsgate has
all but confirmed a sequel is coming, one that would dig into the "Bad" and "Dangerous" eras and,
presumably, the parts of Jackson's life the first film left out. ~Melissa Matosov