Box Office Preview: Michael Jackson Biopic Aims for Record Moonwalk With $65M-$70M U.S. Debut

Filmmaker Antoine Fuqua’s long-awaited biopic of Michael Jackson is hoping to pull off a record-setting moonwalk when opening in theaters across North America and the world this weekend.

From Lionsgate, Michael is tracking to earn at least $65 million to $70 million domestically, which would make it the biggest opening ever for a music biopic ahead of Universal’s current record-holder Straight Outta Compton ($60.2 million) and Fox’s Freddy Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody ($55 million), not adjusted for inflation. The producer behind Michael and Rhapsody is Graham King.

When the film first came on tracking three weeks ago, the range was $55 million to $60 million. While still a great number, the subsequent spike signals that Michael may be benefiting from the nostalgia factor that is inspiring infrequent moviegoers to return to the multiplex in droves for the first time since the pandemic, or sparking interest among the most avid moviegoing demo, Gen Zers.

Michael is widely expected be an even bigger phenomenon at the foreign box office, considering that the King of Pop’s legacy is red-hot across the ocean. Projections show it starting off with $75 million to $90 million for a global debut as high as $165 million against a reported net budget of $155 million and tens of million spent on 22 days of additional work that pushed the budget closer to $200 million.

One hiccup: miserable reviews. As of Thursday night, the film had a rotten 33 percent critics’ score on Rotten tomatoes.

The movie’s journey to the big screen was hardly without its challenges, and its release was delayed several times. The original intent was to capture Jackson’s entire life and career, including allegations of child sexual abuse that began to engulf him in scandal by the 1990s after he had achieved solo super-star status with the release of Thriller in 1982 — one of the best-selling albums of all time — and followed by Bad in 1987. (Jackson was formally charged, tried and acquitted in 2005, four years before his death.)

But plans changed when King and the Jackson Estate — which endorsed the project — were faced with a legal issue when a Jackson accuser who had a past settlement with the estate guaranteeing he would never be featured in a dramatization, objected. King and the filmmakers, along with Lionsgate and Universal, began working on a plan to split the movie into two films so that there would be breathing room to fix this particular issue.

“Fuquaand screenwriterJohn Logandon’t exactly break the mold withMichael, nor do they stuff it with major revelations. But they tap into a vein of melancholy underlaying the stratospheric success that’s surprisingly affecting. The online mob will be sharpening their pitchforks given the movie’s failure to address the accusations of child sexual abuse that tarnishedMichael Jackson’s legacy. But the filmmakers get around that by focusing on his early career, ending with the 1988BadWorld Tour concert in London, years before allegations first surfaced. The epilogue card reading “His story continues” does some heavy lifting,” THR chief film critic David Rooney writes in its review.

The Broadway musicalMJ, now in its fourth year in addition to a national tour and multiple international transfers, hasn’t been hurt by the alllegations of child sexual abuse; nor did it stop Sony and Kenny Ortega’s posthumous 2009 Michael Jackson film,This Is It, from becoming the highest-grossing documentary of all time with $267 million in global ticket sales.

However, the critically acclaimed This Is It did have a harder time winning over audiences in North America. The documentary went backstage with Jackson as he planned and rehearsed for a final concert series of the same name to be held at the O2 in London. He died Aug. 29, 18 days before the first concert. In the weeks leading up to its domestic release, some called for a boycott of the doc. It opened domestically to $22 million on its way to topping out at an impressive $72 million. It grossed $195 million internationally for a global total of $267 million — ahead of the $261 million grossed by Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour in 2025 (the latter is a straight-up concert pic).

Since Lionsgate doesn’t have a global distribution apparatus, Universal snapped up rights to release it internationally in fall 2023. That deal doesn’t include Japan, where Kino Films is in charge. Jackson is nothing short of a hero’s hero in that country, where This Is It earned $57 million of the film’s total foreign earnings. And early this year, Michael made it world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in another nod to the importance of Jackson’s international fanbase.

In North America, Michael will host Thursday night previews before it expands Friday into more than 3,900 theaters, including 1,600 auditoriums offering Imax and premium large-format screens.