The King Is Back. And Hollywood Has No Idea What Hit It.
I’ve been covering this industry long enough to know when something is just a movie and when something is an event. Michael is not just a movie. It hasn’t been just a movie since the moment they announced it. And right now, the night before it officially opens worldwide, I’m sitting here half-convinced that no one, not the studio, not the analysts, not even the die-hards camped outside Dolby in sneakers they definitely bought for this occasion, is fully prepared for what tomorrow brings.
Let me back up.
The numbers first, because they’re genuinely staggering. Trade forecasters are projecting a $150 million global opening weekend. Domestically, somewhere in the $65 to $80 million range across 3,900 North American locations. Internationally, Universal is handling the rollout across 82 markets, and they’re expecting $75 to $80 million from overseas alone. Brazil has the second-highest presales for any Universal theatrical release behind Fast X in Germany. France. Mexico. The UK. These are not small ripples. This is a tidal wave dressed in sequins.
For context, Bohemian Rhapsody opened to $51 million domestically in 2018. Elvis managed $31 million. Both were considered massive for the genre. Michael is about to lap both of them on opening weekend, before most people have even had their Saturday morning coffee.
It comes at a cost, though. The production budget is sitting at $200 million, which makes it the most expensive music biopic ever made. Originally, it was $155 million, but then came the reshoots. Twenty-two extra shoot days. The Jackson estate reportedly funded an additional $15 million to fix a legal problem that, honestly, is its own soap opera.
One of Jackson’s accusers had a past settlement containing a clause that barred him from being dramatized in any film or TV project. So entire sections of the script had to go. The film you’ll see ends tomorrow in 1988, at the Bad World Tour concert in London, years before the accusations that would cloud Jackson’s later life ever entered the picture.
Director Antoine Fuqua made the most of what he had. He shifted the film’s emotional core to the relationship between Michael and his father, Joe Jackson, played with simmering menace by Colman Domingo. Nia Long plays Katherine. The family dynamic carries real weight, apparently. But none of that is what people are actually going to be talking about when walking out of the theater.
They’re going to be talking about Jaafar Jackson.
Michael Jackson’s actual nephew. Jermaine’s son. The kid who grew up in the shadow of the most famous surname in pop music and somehow, impossibly, found a way to carry it into a performance that is already making grown adults fall apart in their seats. At the Hollywood premiere, held at the Dolby Theatre in front of 3,300 people, the applause started early and reportedly never really stopped.
When it was over, Jaafar got up and quietly told the crowd he hoped his uncle was smiling from up above. I don’t care how cynical you are about biopics or Hollywood or the whole machine of it. That one lands.
Now about the critics. Because this is where it gets interesting.
The film is currently sitting at around 27 to 33 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s rough. Critics have written thoughtfully about what the film chooses not to show, about the legal and ethical tangles around the abuse allegations, about whether a biography that stops before the complicated parts is really a biography at all. Those are fair points. Nobody serious is dismissing them.
But here’s what history keeps telling us, and what the industry already knows going into this weekend. Bohemian Rhapsody had a 60 percent critics’ score and an 85 percent audience score. The audience didn’t care what the critics thought. They went because Freddie Mercury meant something to them. Something personal. Something lodged somewhere deep.
Michael Jackson’s fanbase operates on an entirely different frequency. This isn’t fandom in the casual sense. It’s devotional. It crosses borders, languages, and generations. People are showing up this weekend who remember exactly where they were the night Thriller premiered on MTV. There are their kids, who grew up watching those same videos on YouTube. Both groups have been waiting for this film. They are not consulting Rotten Tomatoes before buying their tickets.
Lionsgate needs roughly $500 million just to break even. Internally, they’re hoping for $700 million. Some analysts are already using the word billion, carefully, with appropriate disclaimers, but still, the word is out there. If the film performs, a sequel is essentially confirmed. Apparently, about 30 percent of the cut material could be reshaped into a follow-up, one that might have the room and the legal clearance to go further into Jackson’s later years.
There’s no real competition this weekend. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has had a good run, but it’s been three weeks in. May will bring The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Mortal Kombat II, so the window for Michael to build real momentum is right now.
And it will. I’d put money on it.
There’s something that happens when a cultural figure is gone long enough that grief softens into mythology. Elvis got there. Freddie got there. And Michael Jackson, for all the complexity and unresolved tension that follows his legacy, has absolutely gotten there. The man has been gone since 2009. An entire generation has grown up knowing him only through songs and footage and the stories other people told. This film, for all its limitations, is the first time that generation gets to watch him move, speak, perform, in something built specifically for the big screen.
That’s nothing. That’s not even close to nothing.
Tomorrow the lights go down. Jaafar Jackson walks out under a spotlight. And somewhere in that theater, in thousands of theaters across dozens of countries, someone is going to feel something they haven’t felt in a long time.
The King of Pop isn’t coming back. But for 127 minutes, it’s going to feel like he never left.
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Zayn blends critical thinking with genuine fandom. Whether it’s decoding OTT series arcs or rating the latest Bollywood blockbuster, he writes with clarity, pop fluency, and a dash of irreverence.
