Michael has crossed $1 billion in global ticket sales, becoming the first biopic ever to clear that mark and giving Lionsgate its biggest release by far. The film finished at $1.001 billion worldwide, with $371.8 million from North America and $629.8 million from overseas.
For Jaafar Jackson, who is making his acting debut as Michael Jackson, the milestone lands as a striking show of audience appetite for a film that opened strong and kept building. Michael launched in April with $97 million domestically and $217 million globally, then moved past the opening weekend benchmark for musical biopics set by Straight Outta Compton, which opened to $60 million in 2015.
That final tally also moves Michael past a string of prestige and franchise-heavy rivals. It overtakes Bohemian Rhapsody, which grossed $911 million worldwide in 2018, and Oppenheimer, which reached $975 million in 2023, while leaving Michael as the highest-grossing musical biopic and the biggest film based on a real person. For Lionsgate, it is the company’s first movie to reach $1 billion, beating its previous high-water marks set by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire at $865 million and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 at $850 million.
Michael was directed by Antoine Fuqua and follows Michael Jackson’s rise from the Jackson 5 to his status as the King of Pop. Colman Domingo and Nia Long portray Joe and Katherine Jackson, and Lionsgate handled the North American rollout while Universal distributed the film internationally. Even with behind-the-scenes drama and a critical pile-on, audiences kept showing up, and the numbers show that the backlash never matched the scale of the turnout.
The run is not just a record for a biopic; it is a reminder that theatrical releases can still explode when a title connects beyond opening weekend. Lionsgate is expected to greenlight at least one more film about Jackson’s life, and after this result, the only real question is how quickly the studio moves from expectation to decision.
