The King of Pop Keeps His Crown – ‘Michael’ Is Rewriting Japan’s Box Office History

Few cinematic events carry the kind of emotional weight that a Michael Jackson story does in Japan. The country has long shared a uniquely passionate bond with the King of Pop, one that stretches back decades of sold-out tours, record-breaking album sales, and a theatrical culture built for exactly this kind of larger-than-life spectacle.

When the long-awaited biopic ‘Michael‘ finally touched down in Japanese theaters, expectations were high. The reality has been something else entirely.

‘Michael,’ directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson, had already made history before Japan even opened its doors. The Lionsgate and Universal co-production surpassed ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s’ worldwide gross to become the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, and industry analysts had long flagged Japan as the territory that could push it over the billion-dollar mark. They were not wrong to pay attention.

When the film opened in Japan on June 12, it clocked an estimated $2.3 million on its first day, landing as the second-biggest Hollywood opening day of the year in the territory, trailing only ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2.’ By the end of just its first two days, ‘Michael’ had already crossed the $5 million mark, powered by extraordinary audience word of mouth. That momentum did not slow.

Within seven days, the film officially surpassed Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer,’ which had earned $12.2 million during its entire Japanese theatrical run, with ‘Michael’ reaching a $12.5 million cumulative total and still climbing.

Now, heading into its third weekend in Japan, the numbers are telling a story that even optimistic forecasters might have hesitated to predict. Box office tracker Luiz Fernando reported that ‘Michael’ earned an estimated $4.3 million over its third Friday-to-Sunday frame in Japan, a drop of just 20.4 percent from the previous weekend, with Sunday actually improving by 9 percent compared to the prior week.

That brought the Japanese cumulative total to approximately $25 million, leaving the film just $8 million away from surpassing ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ as the second-highest-grossing Hollywood release of the year in Japan. Analysts tracking the run now see a final total well above $50 million as a realistic ceiling, depending largely on how ‘Toy Story 5,’ debuting in the coming week, affects its momentum at the multiplex.

The depth of Japan’s connection to Michael Jackson is something industry watchers have cited repeatedly as a key driver behind these figures. Jackson’s 2009 concert documentary ‘This Is It’ earned $57 million in Japan alone, representing 21 percent of that film’s entire global gross.

Ahead of the formal theatrical rollout, early IMAX preview screenings in Japan drew strong audience scores of 4.2 stars, a metric that sits directly in line with the legendary launch metrics carried by ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ during its own Japan release, a film that ultimately generated $114 million in that territory. Those preview numbers were a signal. The full run has confirmed it.

Jaafar Jackson’s performance has been widely credited as a central reason audiences keep returning, with fans turning out in costume and performing choreographed routines in theaters since the film’s initial April release. That kind of participatory fandom translates particularly well in Japan, where theatrical culture often embraces immersive, repeated viewing in ways few other markets do.

Back on the global stage, ‘Michael’ sits at approximately $960 million worldwide and is on the verge of becoming only the second film to cross the billion-dollar threshold at the 2026 global box office. John Branca, the Jackson estate co-executor and longtime attorney, told The Washington Informer that the film represents something genuinely unprecedented: “Not everyone else’s story, whether real or made up. Michael’s story.”

The worldwide top five at the 2026 box office currently stands with ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ at just over a billion dollars, followed by ‘Michael’ approaching $960 million, ‘Project Hail Mary’ at $682 million, ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ at $677 million, and ‘Pegasus 3’ rounding out the top five. That ‘Michael’ has managed to separate itself from the competition while still expanding into new markets speaks to a level of audience connection that critics, who gave the film a 38 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, never anticipated.

The arrival of ‘Toy Story 5’ next weekend makes Japan’s coming weeks genuinely fascinating to watch. Pixar’s franchise has always performed with extraordinary legs in Japan, and the two films occupying premium screens simultaneously sets up one of the summer’s most compelling box office matchups in the territory. Whether ‘Michael’ holds enough of its audience to push past the $50 million mark locally while continuing to climb globally remains the central question of the next few weeks.

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