‘Michael’ Is About to Become a Billion-Dollar Movie, and the Critics Could Not Stop It

There are moments in Hollywood when audiences and critics simply refuse to agree, and the extraordinary run of ‘Michael’, the Michael Jackson biopic starring Jaafar Jackson, has become one of the most striking examples in recent memory. Two months into its theatrical life, the film is on the doorstep of a milestone that few music biopics have ever approached, and the story of how it got here is as fascinating as anything on screen.

The film arrived in theaters on April 24 carrying enormous expectations and an equally enormous amount of scrutiny. Directed by Antoine Fuqua from a screenplay by John Logan, ‘Michael’ charts the singer’s early days in the Jackson 5 through his emergence as one of the biggest entertainers in music history, with Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew, portraying his uncle in his acting debut, alongside Colman Domingo and Nia Long as Joe and Katherine Jackson.

What happened next defied almost every conventional industry expectation. Despite landing to largely negative reviews, with critics leveling pointed complaints about what they called a sanitized treatment of its subject’s life, the film opened to $97 million domestically and over $217 million globally in its first weekend. Those ticket sales ranked as the best opening weekend of all time for a biopic, surpassing the record previously held by ‘Straight Outta Compton’, and towered above ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, which opened to $51 million before its own remarkable long run.

The divide between critics and the public became one of the defining stories of the film’s release. On Rotten Tomatoes, only 38 percent of critics’ reviews are positive, with a consensus noting that while Jaafar Jackson’s moves bring the King of Pop to uncanny life, the film mostly plays like a greatest hits album that could have benefitted from more genuine insight into the icon. Metacritic’s weighted average landed at 39 out of 100.

But audiences responded with an almost diametrically opposite verdict. The film earned a 97 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the best ever recorded for the genre, with strong word of mouth attracting virtually every demographic and led by Black and female moviegoers. That gap between critical and popular reception gave the film unstoppable momentum that marketing alone could never have manufactured.

The path to theaters was not smooth. Lionsgate was forced to undertake $50 million in reshoots after the Jackson estate identified a key issue in a plot point in the screenplay concerning one of Jackson’s accusers, who was never meant to be dramatized in the John Logan-written film. The overhaul reshaped the third act entirely, with the film now ending during the Bad World Tour in 1988. Those behind-the-scenes challenges made the film’s eventual commercial performance all the more remarkable.

The movie carries a total price tag near $200 million, with costs split between Lionsgate, Universal, and the Michael Jackson estate, making it one of the most expensive biopics ever produced. The scale of that investment made the opening weekend not just a cultural event but an enormous financial vindication for everyone who pushed the project through its turbulent development.

By mid-June, ‘Michael’ had already rewritten history. The film surpassed ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s total worldwide gross to become the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, with $358.6 million at the domestic box office and $553.3 million internationally. As the tweet captured in the screenshot above confirms, the film has now surpassed $970 million globally, placing it within striking distance of a milestone that once seemed almost inconceivable for a biopic without a superhero suit or a franchise backbone.

Estate executor John Branca reflected on the film’s journey, saying “This is the first time this story could be told. Not everyone else’s story, whether real or made up. Michael’s story.”

With Japan now in its theatrical rollout and the film continuing to hold strongly in Russia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, a billion-dollar finish looks all but locked in. The critics may not have given ‘Michael’ their blessing, but audiences around the world clearly did not need it.

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