Michael moonwalks to $217m opening weekend

Michael, the big-budget Michael Jackson biopic, has shrugged off bad reviews and a troubled production to launch with a $97m opening in North American theaters, contributing to its enormous $217m (£160m, A$303m) worldwide box office and shattering the record for the biggest biopic opening of all time.

The film, a highly authorised portrayal of the “king of pop” that was co-produced by the Jackson estate and stars Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson, took $120.4m internationally and $97m domestic – combining to surpass Oppenheimer’s $180.4m worldwide opening weekend in 2023 and Bohemian Rhapsody’s $124m in 2018.

The film has now opened in most of the world – one notable exception being Japan, home to a huge Jackson fanbase, where it will open in June.

Michael’s $97m domestic debut also surpassed records set by previous biopics in North America, including Oppenheimer ($82m in 2023), Straight Outta Compton ($60.2m in 2015) and Bohemian Rhapsody ($51m in 2018).

Critics have criticised Michael for glossing over some of the less convenient aspects of Jackson’s life but audiences have been far more enthusiastic: on Rotten Tomatoes its critics score is 38%, compared with 97% from audiences. A few weeks back, estimates for Michael’s North American opening weekend were closer to $50m but this rose to $70m – which it wildly overperformed.

“From the beginning, all of the signals were that something like this was possible,” the Lionsgate chairman, Adam Fogelson, told Associated Press. “We were seeing massive engagement with every conceivable audience segment that you could identify.”

Even in the lucrative market of music biopics, Michael was an audacious bet by Lionsgate on a controversial figure. The reputation of Jackson, who died in 2009 at the age of 50, has been repeatedly tarnished by allegations of sexual abuse of children. Jackson and his estate have maintained his innocence, though the pop star acknowledged sharing a bedroom with other people’s children. He was acquitted in his sole criminal trial in 2005.

Some Jackson family members opposed the film: his sister Janet Jackson was uninvolved and doesn’t appear in it, while Jackson’s daughter, Paris, called it “fantasy land”.

The film also had an unusually rocky production. After shooting was completed, producers realised they had made a costly mistake. The third act focused on the accusations of Jordan Chandler, then 13 years old, whom Jackson paid $23m to in a 1994 settlement. The terms of that settlement barred the Jackson estate from ever mentioning Chandler in a movie.

A huge chunk of the film was cut and reshoots for as much as $50m were done at the estate’s expense. Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan reworked the movie to conclude in 1988, before any accusations were made.

“I would take issue with the idea that we as a studio or as film-makers were running around in a panic,” Fogelson told AP on Sunday, labelling it “a unique and challenging circumstance” instead

Yet as bad as things once looked for Michael, the movie turned into a huge hit. The film’s total production cost came close to $200m. To defray costs, Lionsgate sold international distribution rights to Universal. A sequel is in development. A third film after that, Fogelson said, is “not inconceivable.”

Director Antoine Fuqua has said he would like to direct the sequel, telling Deadline on Sunday: “It would kill me if somebody else did it.”

Cut footage could be repurposed as the shoots went “pretty far”, Fuqua added: “We went through the Jordan allegations we couldn’t use. We went farther than that. Maybe a year or two after that (1995) when things turned against Michael.”

Plans for Michael were first announced in 2022, three years after the release of Leaving Neverland, the 2019 documentary about Jackson’s alleged sexual abuse of children. The Leaving Neverland director, Dan Reed, recently told the Guardian: “It kind of fills me with horror, the degree to which everyone can turn a blind eye to the fact that this guy was a bit of a monster.”

Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen biopic, remains the highest-grossing music biopic of all time after taking $910m at the global box office, while Oppenheimer holds the record for overall biopic with $975m.

The Guardian