Michael opens with $218M global opening weekend box office

https://deadline.com/2026/04/box-office-michael-global-opening-1236873806/

Michael came in higher in both its domestic and global take with $97.2 million in North America and $218.8M worldwide, respectively.

The Lionsgate-produced and -released feature stateside saw a Sunday of $25.4M ($400,000 more than expected), which repped a -22% hold off Saturday’s $32.4M

In 64 territories, Michael notched the highest-grossing opening for a musical biopic, apart from China (now at $4.8M), where it opened just below Bohemian Rhapsody.

In another win for a non-franchise title, Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic pulled off a moon walk for the ages at the worldwide box office with a record-smashing $97.2 million domestic opening and $121.6 million foreign launch for a global blast off of $218.8 million, according to weekend actuals.

Final weekend numbers show the movie coming in slightly ahead of Sunday’s estimated $97 domestic launch and $120.4 foreign debut.

Michael, beating expectations in North America by nearly $30 million, boasts the biggest domestic opening of all time for any biopic after passing up Oppenheimer ($80 million), not adjusted for inflation. And the Lionsgate movie eclipsed Bohemian Rhapsody to rank as the top worldwide opening for a music biopic. Universal, a powerhouse on the international front, is releasing the film overseas on behalf of Lionsgate.

Phenomenal world-of-mouth is more than making up for generally lousy reviews (its Rotten Tomatoes critics score is 40 percent).

Exit polls quickly revealed Michael isn’t just appointment viewing for hard-core fans and that strong word-of-mouth is more than making for one of the biggest divides in recent memory between critics and audiences: The film is graced with 97 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes — the best ever for the genre; PostTrak exit scores are in the low 90s and a definite recommend of 85 percent, levels rarely seen. And while it didn’t earn a perfect grade on CinemaScore, it did earn a good-enough A-.

Michael‘s success is a result of playing across all ethnicities and age groups. While it did over-index among Black moviegoers (38 percent), Latinos accounted for a sizable 26 percent of the audience, followed by white moviegoers at 26 percent, according to PostTrak.

And the following age stats are a distributor’s are a dream come true, but rarely do. Moviegoers over the age of 55 rarely turn out for opening weekend; teenagers can be just as elusive. In this case, those 55 and older made up anywhere from 15 to percent of ticket buyers, while teens made up 6 percent to 7 percent (believe me, those are excellent numbers). Gen Zers and younger Millennials also turned out in force, with those between the ages of 18 and 34 making up 45 percent to 50 percent of the opening-weekend audience. But those over the age of 35 almost matched those numbers, or 44 percent to 48 percent, including those over the age of 55 who were previously mentioned.