When Michael opened on April 24, even the most optimistic projections had it landing somewhere around $60 million domestically. Lionsgate was privately hoping for $70 million. Tracking services were cautiously bullish. Nobody was predicting what actually happened.

The film made $39.5 million on its first day alone, surpassing Oppenheimer for the biggest opening day ever for a biographical film and the highest opening day of any film released in 2026. By Sunday it had crossed $97 million domestically and $218.8 million globally, making it the best opening weekend for any biopic in history, the best opening for any music biopic ever, and the second-biggest debut of 2026 behind only The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

As of today, less than two weeks after release, Michael has crossed $300 million worldwide, surpassing Elvis ($288.6 million) to become the second highest-grossing music biopic of all time. The only film ahead of it is Bohemian Rhapsody at $911 million, and industry analysts expect Michael to challenge that number if it holds through May and June.

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The numbers are staggering on their own. But what makes them significant is the context. Michael has a 37% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews have been largely negative, with critics calling the film sanitized and incomplete for ending its story in 1988 and omitting the allegations that defined the later years of Jackson's public life. Under normal circumstances, those reviews would have killed a $200 million film before it left its opening weekend.

Instead, audiences responded with a 96% audience score, the best ever recorded for the genre. PostTrak exit scores landed in the low 90s. CinemaScore gave it an A-minus. The definite recommend rate hit 85%, a number that is rarely seen for any genre. Nearly 40% of the gross came from IMAX and premium large-format screens, which tells you that audiences were not casually attending this film. They were treating it as an event.

The disconnect between critics and audiences is not a mystery. Critics watched a film that chose not to reckon with the most controversial aspects of its subject's life. Audiences watched a film that let them experience the music, the movement, and the mythology of someone whose cultural impact is genuinely without parallel. Both responses are valid. But the box office makes it clear which one is winning the conversation right now.

At the center of all of it is Jaafar Jackson. His performance is the reason this film works at all. Playing your own uncle, who happens to be the most famous entertainer in human history, is not a role that preparation alone can carry. There is something in the way Jaafar inhabits the physicality of Michael Jackson that goes beyond mimicry. The moonwalk sequences, the stage presence, the specific way Michael held a microphone and tilted his head and let silence do the work before the music came in. Jaafar understood all of it at a level that has turned his debut into one of the most talked-about acting performances of the year.

PHOTO: KEVIN MAZUR / LIONSGATE

Lionsgate Chair Adam Fogelson said it plainly: "If you give audiences what they want, they will come." That statement is both a celebration and an acknowledgment. The film gave audiences exactly what they wanted. Whether that is enough, or whether the story it chose not to tell will eventually define its legacy more than the records it broke, is a question that will outlast the box office run itself.

For now, Michael is still dancing. The next major adult-oriented wide release is not until Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day on June 12, which gives the film over a month of relatively clear runway. If it holds the way Bohemian Rhapsody did, $700 million worldwide is not just possible. It is expected.

And somewhere in all of those numbers is a simpler truth that no box office chart can fully capture. Michael Jackson's music still moves people. His presence still fills rooms. And his nephew just proved that the legacy is not a museum piece. It is alive, it is on stage, and it is selling out every theater in the world.

Michael is in theaters and IMAX now.