‘Michael’ Refuses to Quit in Japan, Holding Strong at No. 1 Despite Storms and an Earthquake
Even natural disasters could not keep fans away from ‘Michael‘ in Japan this weekend. Despite two storms and an earthquake hitting the country on Saturday, the King of Pop’s biopic held its ground at the top of the Japanese box office, with box office analyst Luiz Fernando reporting an estimated $1.7 million on its third Saturday alone, a drop of just 27.5% from the previous weekend, pushing its Japanese cumulative total to $23.1 million.
That resilience has quickly made ‘Michael’ one of the most impressive Hollywood performers of the year in Japan. The film is tracking between $3.6 million and $4.6 million for its third three-day weekend in the territory, and its word of mouth has been described as overwhelmingly positive by industry observers tracking its performance. With those numbers, it has now climbed to third place on the list of highest-grossing Hollywood releases of the year in Japan.
The film’s Japan rollout got off to a remarkable start on its opening Friday, collecting $2.3 million including the previous week’s limited preview gross, making it the second-largest Hollywood opening day of the year in the territory, behind only ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2,’ and more than double ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s’ opening-day gross in the market. The launch set the tone for a run that has consistently outpaced expectations.
Japan has long held a special connection to Michael Jackson’s music and legacy, and Lionsgate partnered with local distributor Kino to handle the Japanese theatrical release, a strategic move aimed at maximizing the film’s reach in a territory the studio identified early as crucial to crossing the global billion-dollar threshold.
Globally, the picture is nearing $970 million after a softer week-on-week increase compared to earlier in its run. The film has already surpassed ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s’ lifetime worldwide gross, overtaking that film’s $910.9 million total to become the highest-grossing music biopic ever made, with $358.6 million coming from domestic markets and more than $553 million from international territories.
Crossing $1 billion globally would make ‘Michael’ only the second film to reach that milestone at the worldwide box office this year, after Universal’s ‘Super Mario Galaxy Movie,’ and Japan’s sustained contribution to the cumulative total is now one of the key variables determining whether that landmark gets reached.
The fact that audiences in Japan turned up through storms and seismic activity to keep ‘Michael’ at number one says something that no marketing campaign could manufacture. It speaks to the depth of connection this film has built with audiences in a market that has always taken the King of Pop more seriously than almost anywhere else on the planet.
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