5 Reasons Why Michael Ruled The Box Office

Lionsgate, director Antoine Fuqua, and Michael Jackson's estate have successfully weathered a lot of turmoil to deliver one of the biggest hits of the year so far. "Michael," a biopic covering the King of Pop's rise to superstardom, defied expectations at the box office, posting a massive global opening. Critics be damned, people just wanted to see Jackson do his thing on the big screen.

"Michael" opened to $97.2 million domestically to go with an incredible $121.6 million internationally for a whopping $218.8 million globally. It was easily the number one movie on the charts, dethroning "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" after its reign atop the box office these past handful of weeks. But there's a new king in town.

This instantly set a new high bar for biopics, besting the openings for "Straight Outta Compton" ($60 million opening/$201 million worldwide) and "Bohemian Rhapsody." The Queen biopic opened to $52 million domestically en route to $910 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing non-franchise movies of all time. It's early, but that bodes very well for "Michael," which has a production budget in the $200 million range that Lionsgate needs to recoup. Fortunately, for all involved, that's not going to be an issue. It's just a matter of how high this movie can fly in the weeks/months to come.

What went right here? How did Lionsgate manage to gamble so big on this biopic and come out ahead? We're going to look at the biggest reasons why "Michael" ruled the box office on its opening weekend. Let's get into it.

Recent weeks have brought big hits, most notably the aforementioned "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie." We've also gotten horror movies like Lee Cronin's "The Mummy" and "Ready or Not 2: Here I Come," among others. But while those all found their audience to some degree or another, we haven't had a pure, for adults blockbuster since "Project Hail Mary" began its dominant run at the box office a month ago.

For that reason, "Michael" became the first and sort of default choice for a lot of moviegoers. For those who make going to the movies a semi-regular but not religious habit, there's a decent chance they have already seen "Project Hail Mary." Meanwhile, PG movies/kids movies have done exceedingly well in recent years, but they're not necessarily for everybody all of the time. 

This was a movie geared towards adults, particularly those who grew up loving Michael Jackson's music. It was an effective motivator to get people off the couch, evidently. Hence, "Michael" blew past its box office preview numbers, which had it pulling in $90 million (at most) domestically.

The film tells the story of Michael Jackson's life, tracing his journey from the earliest days of his talent as the lead of the Jackson Five to his emergence as a chart-topping solo artist who eventually became the biggest entertainer in the world. Jafaar Jackson, Michael Jackson's real-life nephew, plays the late pop star in the biopic.

The sheer popularity of Michael Jackson as an entertainer simply cannot be overstated. "Thriller" is the best-selling album of all time. He had 13 number one hits. He wasn't just a popular musician; he was a global pop culture sensation the likes of which we hadn't quite seen before or since. Elvis Presley was very popular, which is why 2022's "Elvis" made good money at the box office, but he was more of an American icon. Jackson? He's known the world over.

That's key when looking at the numbers for "Michael." It made $217.3 million overseas on its opening weekend, which was well above what estimates suggested. A movie this expensive can't quite justify its existence based on the North American box office alone. But Lionsgate and the film's producers understood that, if things went well, audiences around the world would turn up to see Jackson do his thing on the big screen.

This movie's success in the early going makes Sony's four-part Beatles biopic centered on John, Paul, George, and Ringo seem like a better idea than maybe it did previously. Setting aside any controversy that followed Jackson both in his later years and after his passing (rest assured, we'll be getting into that later), there are very few artists in the history of popular music whose legacy could carry them to this sort of success on a global scale. Jackson is perhaps at the tippy top of that very, very small list. The numbers prove that.

I'm not here to wade into the larger, messy conversation that has been going on around this movie. What I'm here to do is explain why it was so damn successful. What it boils down to is that director Antoine Fuqua and writer John Logan made "Michael" into an unabashed crowd-pleaser, plain and simple. What many critics wanted out of it or believed it should have/could have been is irrelevant to the ticket-buying masses.

"Michael" currently holds a rough 38% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it carries a stellar 97% audience rating. It also earned a very solid A- CinemaScore, which suggests that word of mouth from moviegoers will be strong, benefiting the biopic in the weeks to come. /Film's Witney Seibold called "Michael" a "predictably overly-sanitized biopic of the King of Pop" in his review, and many critics agreed with that assessment. It didn't matter.

This is far from the first time that critics and audiences have disagreed about a movie. "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" defied expectations at the box office last year after suffering a similar critical lashing, but it resonated with its intended audience. Granted, the situations are radically different, yet the result is the same. If the movie in question pleases the general public, it's got a good shot at becoming a hit whether or not critics are on its side (for better or worse).

It may seem simple, but the not-so-secret sauce when it comes to the success of "Michael" is the fact that Michael Jackson is one of the most famous people to ever walk on planet Earth. Turning popular things into movies is very frequently a recipe for success. Case in point: "Minecraft" is a wildly popular video game, and "A Minecraft Movie" was a huge hit last year. Colleen Hoover has similarly become a box office juggernaut because her very popular books are now being turned into equally popular films.

It's not always that simple, but, broadly speaking, if something or someone is popular in another medium, a movie based on that person or thing has got a built-in audience. Jackson's audience is incomprehensibly large, and it wants to see him sing "Beat It" and "Bad." This movie delivers on that promise. It's not rocket science. Even if Jackson were still alive, his prime years would be good and truly behind him. This film, in some ways, is the closest a lot of people will get to a prime Michael Jackson concert, with a side of "Behind the Music" to go with it.

Something like "The Runaways" (despite starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett) was only ever going to reach a certain number of people. Likewise, something like "Priscilla" was only partially connected to Elvis Presley without really being about him and had relatively limited appeal. In this case, Lionsgate delivered a movie centered on one of the most broadly popular, mass-appeal figures in the history of popular culture. It understandably resonated with a lot of people.

It's not a difficult concept to wrap one's head around, but it simply can't be ignored in discussing this film's outsized opening weekend success.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of it all, Michael Jackson courted a lot of controversy when he was alive. Much of that was covered in the widely-acclaimed documentary "Leaving Neverland," which delved into the alleged dark side of Jackson's life. Naturally, "Michael" was going to court controversy given its subject matter.

Many critics have cited the fact that the movie doesn't address the most damning sexual misconduct allegations made against Jackson as a point of contention. In fact, "Michael" had to reshoot its entire third act amid behind-the-scenes drama, stemming from the fact that the film wasn't legally allowed to dramatize an alleged victim by the name of Jordan Chandler. A lot of ink has been spilled about the movie as a result of all this. It also resulted in an awful lot of free publicity.

While this certainly wasn't the kind of publicity that Lionsgate would have hoped for, it nevertheless got "Michael" on a lot of people's radar. There are even some folks out there going after critics on social media, seeing the movie almost as a "screw you" of sorts. Many of the film's negative reviews have been amplified because of this and had the unintended effect of generating curiosity, rather than warding moviegoers off of watching the film at all.

Controversy is rarely good for a movie, but, in this case, it seemed to create a situation where it all worked in the film's favor. Would Lionsgate and Antoine Fuqua have preferred to not have to reshoot the original third act of the movie? Of course. But speaking purely from a business perspective, one would be hard-pressed to argue it wasn't financially beneficial for them.

"Michael" is in theaters now.