Lionsgate’s “Michael” pulled in $97 million domestically and $217.4 million worldwide in its opening weekend, the biggest debut in history for a biographical film and the largest global launch ever for a music biopic. The numbers, reported by Lionsgate on Sunday, came in roughly $30 million ahead of the studio’s own most aggressive tracking.
Antoine Fuqua’s film, starring Jaafar Jackson as his late uncle, beat “Oppenheimer” to claim the all-time domestic biopic record. It also passed “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the top global music-biopic opening, and it ranks as the second-biggest opening of 2026 behind only Universal’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”
The opening landed despite an ugly critical response. “Michael” sits at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes with reviewers, who called it sanitized, hagiographic, and a “feature-length publicity” reel, in The Wrap critic William Bibbiani’s words. The audience score is 96%. CinemaScore exit polls graded it an A-minus.
That gap is what made the weekend a story. Variety’s box office reporting noted that David A. Gross, who runs the FranchiseRe newsletter, described the film as playing “as a feel good, nostalgic appreciation” for ticket buyers even as critics complained it dodges the harder chapters of the singer’s life. PostTrak data showed the audience was 61% female, and 66% of moviegoers were 25 or older.
“If you give audiences what they want, they will come,” Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson said in a Saturday statement. He thanked Fuqua, producer Graham King, Jaafar Jackson and the Michael Jackson estate.
The film opened in 82 international markets, excluding Japan, and finished No. 1 in 64 of them. It set all-time opening-weekend records for a musical biopic in 63 markets. The U.K. led overseas with about $13.8 million through Sunday, followed by France at $10.3 million and Mexico at $9.3 million. Imax accounted for $13.8 million in North America, roughly 14% of the domestic gross, and $24.5 million globally.
For Lionsgate, this is the biggest opening since “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” took $102 million in 2015. The studio split the reported $200 million production budget with Universal, which handled international distribution, and the Jackson estate, which financed the reshoots Fuqua needed last June.
Those reshoots are the reason a follow-up is already on the table. After principal photography wrapped, the filmmakers found a clause in a 1994 settlement that prohibited any depiction of the case involving Jordan Chandler, the 13-year-old who accused Jackson of abuse in 1993. The 22-day reshoot, which Variety reported cost $10 to $15 million, scrubbed the Neverland raid and any reference to the allegations from the third act. The film now ends in the late 1980s.
It also ends with a title card reading “His Story Continues.”
Speaking at CinemaCon last week, Fogelson told Business Insider, “Look, there’s at least one more movie.” He said he had always preferred a multi-film approach over the four-hour cut Fuqua originally delivered. King, who has been producing the project since 2019, was more cautious at the Los Angeles premiere on April 23. “We’re definitely kicking around some ideas,” he said. “We’ll see what happens very soon, but right now, I have so much anxiety about people seeing this one.”
Whatever a sequel covers, it gets a head start. About 30% of the original three-and-a-half-hour cut, according to Variety, can be reused. Jaafar Jackson told Entertainment Tonight the second film is in early development and that he “absolutely” wants to keep the role.
Next weekend brings real competition. “The Devil Wears Prada 2” opens Friday and is expected to court a similar female-leaning audience. “Michael” is currently playing in 3,915 North American theaters.
