Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic crossed $615 million worldwide this weekend. $256.7 million domestic. $358.3 million international. That makes it the second highest grossing music biopic in cinema history, trailing only Bohemian Rhapsody. And the run isn’t over.
The film, just titled Michael, opened April 24, 2026. Domestic opening weekend: $97.2 million. Global opening: $217 million. In its second weekend just past, Michael did $54 million, a 44 percent drop. Solid hold for a music biopic, but enough of a drop that Disney’s Devil Wears Prada 2 took back the number one spot.
I’ll be straight with you. I went in skeptical. Music biopics have a habit of being mediocre across the board. This one isn’t.
The Numbers Cinema Hasn’t Seen in Years
$615 million worldwide on a $155 million reported production budget. That puts Michael at roughly 4x its budget recovered before merchandising, streaming, and home release windows even kick in. Theatrical profitability happens around 2.5x budget for most films. Michael cleared the bar weeks ago.
Variety’s box office tracker has called Michael the highest grossing music biopic opening in history. The next milestone in sight: $700 million, which would put Michael past Walk the Line, Rocketman, and Elvis combined for its category position. The realistic ceiling: $850 million domestic plus international, which would put it within striking distance of Bohemian Rhapsody’s $903.6 million all time record.
For context, only four 2026 films have grossed more globally so far. Michael sits as the year’s number four worldwide film, ahead of every other non franchise release.
Why the Casting Choices Worked
Jaafar Jackson plays adult Michael. He’s the King of Pop’s biological nephew, son of Jermaine Jackson. He had never acted in a film before this one. Director Antoine Fuqua cast him in 2022 after a private audition reportedly arranged through the Jackson estate.
The risk was obvious. Family casting in a biopic about a polarizing figure could have read as sanitized PR. Instead, Jaafar Jackson’s resemblance to his uncle, vocal control on the musical numbers, and trained dance background carried scenes that lesser actors would have flattened.
Young Michael is played by Juliano Krue Valdi, also a film debut. The casting director’s instinct here was crucial. The early Jackson 5 sequences had to feel authentic, not staged. Valdi delivers them. The Hollywood Reporter’s review singled out the Jackson 5 sequences as the emotional anchor of the first act.
What the Film Actually Covers
Michael runs from Jackson’s involvement in the Jackson 5 in the 1960s through the Bad tour in the late 1980s. That’s a deliberate choice. The narrative ends before the Jordan Chandler allegations, before the Neverland Ranch scandals, before any of the late career legal complications. Antoine Fuqua publicly framed the cutoff as “telling the story of the music, not the courtrooms.”
That framing has been called both a strength and a cop out depending on who is reviewing. The Jackson estate cooperated extensively with the film and approved the script, which gave Fuqua access to original music masters but also constrained what could be included. Critics who wanted a fuller portrait have been vocal. Audiences appear unbothered.
Bohemian Rhapsody had similar criticism for its handling of Freddie Mercury’s later life. The market lesson: audiences buy biopic tickets to celebrate, not to litigate.
Why Antoine Fuqua Was the Right Director
Fuqua’s previous credits include Training Day, The Equalizer, and Emancipation. None of those are music films. He was an unconventional choice when the project was first announced in 2021.
What Fuqua brought: pacing discipline. Music biopics often sprawl into 165 minute meditations. Michael runs 142 minutes, tight by category standards. Fuqua also has a long working relationship with director of photography Robert Richardson, who had shot for Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino. The result is concert sequences with the visual density of Hollywood narrative film, not the flat coverage typical of music documentaries.
The Bad tour stadium recreation, shot at the Rose Bowl with 60,000 extras over four nights, is the film’s centerpiece. It’s also the part of the film going most viral on social media, driving repeat ticket sales among audiences born after Jackson died.
Devil Wears Prada 2 Took Back Number One This Weekend
The 44 percent second weekend drop for Michael was enough for Disney’s Devil Wears Prada 2 to retake the top spot at the domestic box office. Rotten Tomatoes weekend coverage tracked the shift.
Devil Wears Prada 2 reunites Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly and Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, 20 years after the original. Director David Frankel returned. The film is a fashion industry comedy aimed squarely at the demographic Michael isn’t reaching: women 25 to 54 who came of age with the 2006 original.
Counter programming usually loses to event films. In this case, the two films are pulling from different audiences and elevating each other’s totals by sustaining the overall theatrical attendance level for the spring window. Both will keep generating money. Both will keep theaters full into Memorial Day weekend.
What Comes Next at the Box Office
Two films loom on the horizon. The Mandalorian and Grogu opens Memorial Day weekend on May 22. Industry tracking has it at $100 to $140 million domestic opening, smaller than the franchise’s TV cultural footprint but enough to take the top spot for at least one weekend.
Mortal Kombat II also dropped earlier this May and has been a sleeper, putting up surprisingly strong international numbers. Combined with Michael and Devil Wears Prada 2 still in the top five, the May box office is the strongest spring run since 2019.
This matters for the industry beyond ticket revenue. Two consecutive quarters of declining theatrical attendance in 2024 and 2025 had executives privately questioning whether the model was sustainable. May 2026 is the first month in two years showing the model is, in fact, sustainable when content lands.
Why This Matters
For Hollywood, Michael breaks the IP fatigue narrative. The conventional wisdom heading into 2026 was that audiences had tired of legacy IP and franchise sequels. Michael isn’t IP in the Marvel sense. It’s a musical biography of a single celebrity, dependent on craft and cast rather than franchise tail. Its success suggests audiences will show up for non franchise event films if the execution is right.
For Jaafar Jackson, this debut is a launch pad most actors never get. Whether he chooses to act again or returns to music, the film resets his career options.
For the Jackson estate, the financial implications are significant. Estate participation in the film’s gross plus expected catalog sales lift means tens of millions in new revenue for a portfolio that had been declining slowly since 2009.
USABlaze Takeaway
Here is what is real. The film is good. The casting is brave. The numbers are real. None of that means the film is a perfect biographical portrait of Michael Jackson. It isn’t. The scope was narrowed by negotiation with the estate, and you can feel the edges where it was negotiated.
But Hollywood doesn’t get many home runs on non franchise material in 2026. This one is a home run. It is also a reminder that a director who knows pacing, a cast who can carry weight without being box office names, and a property with cultural reservoir depth, can still produce hits that don’t depend on superhero scaffolding.
$615 million already, climbing toward $700 million, with weekend hold strength suggesting another 30 to 45 days of meaningful runs. The Michael Jackson biopic is the must see film of the spring, whatever your relationship with the subject is.
Sources: Variety, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia (Michael 2026), Screen Rant (weekend), The Numbers.
By The USABlaze Editorial Desk