‘Michael’ Just Broke Another Box Office Barrier, This Time in a Surprising Country

Michael Jackson’s cultural footprint across Africa has always run deep, but few could have predicted just how dramatically that connection would translate into box office numbers this year. Antoine Fuqua’s biopic ‘Michael‘, starring Jaafar Jackson as his late uncle, has spent months rewriting box office history across multiple continents, and its latest milestone comes from a market that rarely dominates Hollywood headlines.

The film’s theatrical run in Nigeria has become one of the most talked-about stories in the country’s cinema industry this year, driven almost entirely by the enduring power of Jackson’s legacy among West African audiences. What makes the achievement even more remarkable is that it happened without the participation of one of the region’s biggest cinema chains.

‘Michael’ has now crossed the 800 million naira mark at the Nigerian box office, according to figures from the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria, cementing its place as one of the highest-grossing films ever released in the country. The film generated nearly 12 million naira during just one recent week alone, continuing a run that has held strong for months since its late April premiere.

That performance is especially striking given that Filmhouse Group, one of Nigeria’s largest cinema exhibitors, never picked up the film at all. Industry observers estimate that a full nationwide rollout across every major chain could have pushed the film’s domestic total as high as one billion naira, meaning the current numbers may actually understate just how deep audience demand for the film has run.

Nowhere has that demand been more visible than at a single Lagos venue. EbonyLife Cinemas grossed over 100 million naira during ‘Michael’s opening weekend alone, a result that prompted EbonyLife Media CEO Mo Abudu to publicly celebrate the milestone. She confirmed that EbonyLife Cinemas had been ranked the number one cinema location in West Africa for the film’s performance, calling the achievement exceptional and describing the numbers as proof of the venue’s mission to deliver unforgettable cinema experiences.

That single location result also helped ‘Michael’ claim the biggest opening weekend for a Hollywood release in Nigeria at the time, alongside standing as the biggest ever opening for any biopic globally with a worldwide debut north of 217 million dollars. The film’s Nigerian trajectory has continued to build steadily in the months since, regularly outperforming even strong local Nollywood competitors at the national box office.

Nigeria’s box office success mirrors a broader pattern that has played out across the African continent throughout the film’s release. ‘Michael’ has also claimed the number one spot in South Africa and Kenya, with South Africa alone contributing more than 3.5 million dollars to the film’s international haul, figures that industry insiders view as genuinely significant given the smaller theater footprint and lower ticket prices found across most African markets compared to the US or Europe.

The broader context makes Nigeria’s numbers even more impressive. Modern cinema access in the country remains concentrated almost entirely in a handful of major cities, with Nigeria’s cinema infrastructure representing just a fraction of the screen capacity found in Western markets. Pulling in record-breaking numbers under those constraints speaks directly to how deeply Michael Jackson’s music and legacy still resonate across West Africa nearly two decades after his passing.

Globally, the film’s success story has only continued to snowball, having already surpassed Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time and dethroning ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as the top-grossing music biopic in history. With the film continuing to hold strong across African markets months into its release, it has become clear that ‘Michael’s box office triumph is not just a Western phenomenon but a genuinely global one.

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