The King of Pop is conquering the box office from beyond the grave. Lionsgate’s Michael, starring Jaafar Jackson as his uncle Michael Jackson, has surpassed $497 million worldwide through three weekends of release — cementing its status as the second-highest-grossing music biopic of all time, trailing only 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
Michael arrived in theaters as an instant sensation, with $97 million domestically and $217 million globally in its first weekend of release. These ticket sales rank as the best start of all time for a biopic, smashing the record set by 2015’s Straight Outta Compton ($60 million) and towering above 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which opened to $51 million.
Michael raked in $54.5 million in its second weekend at the domestic box office, making it the biggest second weekend for a music biopic at only a 43.9% drop from its first weekend — also the biggest second weekend for a live-action film at the domestic box office this year. Domestically, it has crossed the $184.3 million threshold. It has surpassed The Intouchables at the worldwide box office to become the tenth highest-grossing biopic of all time — and it’s still climbing.
It has taken Michael less than three weekends to earn back more than two and a half times its reported budget of roughly $200 million — the general threshold at which a film breaks even after accounting for theater splits and marketing costs.
The film carries a price tag near $200 million, making it one of the most expensive biopics ever made. Those costs were split by Lionsgate, Universal, which is handling international distribution, and the Michael Jackson estate.
Michael is the biggest hit for Lionsgate in more than a decade, since 2015’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, which opened to $102 million. If ticket sales surpass $700 million worldwide, as analysts project, Michael will land among the studio’s biggest films of all time.
While Bohemian Rhapsody still maintains its title as the highest-grossing music biopic of all time at $903.6 million cumulative, Michael is giving it a run. Its projected third-weekend drop of just 36% is significantly better than the Queen biopic’s 48.6% in the same frame.
Michael has earned 58.2% of its worldwide gross from international markets thus far, but it has yet to open in every overseas market, including South Korea and Japan — leaving considerable global upside still on the table.
Critically, the film has been divisive. Michael received negative reviews from critics, who praised Jaafar’s performance but criticized the story as “sanitized.” On Rotten Tomatoes, 39% of 274 critics’ reviews are positive. Film reviewers have complained that Michael takes a sanitized look at Jackson’s life because it does not include the child sexual abuse allegations leveled against the singer later in his career. That wasn’t always the plan — initially, the screenplay had dramatized a 1993 lawsuit. But those sequences had to be removed after producers discovered a clause in the settlement with the young accuser that barred the depiction or mention of him in film or television.
Analysts anticipate Michael will hit the $500 million mark during its third weekend and ultimately land between $800 million and $1 billion worldwide. Whether it ultimately dethrones Bohemian Rhapsody remains to be seen — but it is already one of the most commercially significant entertainment stories of 2026.
