Michael Jackson Biopic Set to Top $200 Million Opening Weekend

The opening of Michael showed just how hungry studios still are for event films that can pull people into theaters in person. By Saturday, Lionsgate was projecting Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic at $95 million to $100 million domestically and $206.4 million worldwide, after the movie had already taken in $39.5 million on Friday from 3,955 North American theaters. For a business that has spent years chasing broad, communal turnout, the result was a reminder that star power and nostalgia can still move a massive crowd.

The film’s opening also marked one of Lionsgate’s biggest wins in years and its strongest post-pandemic launch by a wide margin. Early forecasts had put the domestic debut in the $65 million to $70 million range, and some exhibitors thought it might climb toward $80 million, but premium formats helped push the result far higher. Boxoffice Pro had noted that about 3,900 of the film’s screens were IMAX and premium large-format plays, while Deadline said Universal reported $111.4 million overseas from 82 territories, helping the worldwide total clear $200 million before the weekend was over.

The gap between critics and moviegoers was equally stark. Reviews had landed in the low 30s and then 40 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but audience scores surged to 96 percent, and the film drew especially strong turnout from Black and female moviegoers. That split underlined a familiar pattern in blockbuster culture: when a title arrives as an event, Michael Jackson’s global fan base can outweigh bad notices, at least long enough to turn opening weekend into a spectacle.

The movie’s path to the screen was hardly simple. Michael carried a reported $155 million production budget, plus costly reshoots after filmmakers reworked the third act because legal issues prevented them from depicting or mentioning elements of the 1993 child sexual abuse allegations. The film stars Jaafar Jackson as his uncle, with Colman Domingo, Nia Long and Miles Teller among the supporting cast, and the opening has now given Lionsgate a rare national box-office victory after a troubled production that many rivals had once treated as too risky to back.