The numbers suggest it might actually happen.
Thirty-nine percent on Rotten Tomatoes. A 96% verified audience score. The BBC gave it one star. Words like “sanitised” and “bland” are doing the rounds. None of that has stopped Michael from starting like a record-breaker, and if that gap between critics and audiences holds, we may be watching the coronation of a new box office king.
The film to beat is Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen’s biopic grossed $903 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing musical biopic in history. It set the template. It rode awards season for three straight months, hoovered up four Oscars, and defied every expectation attached to a mid-budget prestige picture. For the highest-grossing biopic outright, the number is $975M. That’s Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb epic had Barbie running alongside it, the two films feeding each other’s momentum in a cultural event nobody had seen before or since. Oppenheimer didn’t do that in isolation. Michael is doing this without a twin-release phenomenon pushing it into the bloodstream. And if the trajectory holds, the conversation may not stop at Bohemian Rhapsody.
Michael is no longer merely projected to open bigger. Friday midday numbers now put the domestic opening weekend between $85M and $95M. Bigger than Bohemian Rhapsody’s $51.1M domestic debut. Bigger than Straight Outta Compton’s $60.2M, the current record for a musical biopic opening. Bigger than Oppenheimer’s $82.4M, the domestic record for any biopic opening. At the low end of those estimates, the domestic biopic opening record falls. That would make it the biggest domestic biopic opening weekend on record.
The closest parallel isn’t just financial. Bohemian Rhapsody’s PostTrak figures showed 88% positive audience score and a 75% definite recommend. Michael has matched the 88% positive exactly, and pushed the definite recommend to 81%. That six-point gap on recommends is one of the numbers that matters most for long-term performance. People aren’t just enjoying it. They’re planning to drag people back with them.
Both films triggered the same critical complaint: authorised musical biopics flatten difficult lives into crowd-pleasing myth. Bohemian Rhapsody was described as playing “fast and loose with the truth.” It fictionalised the timeline, softened Mercury’s sexuality, and bent biography to serve spectacle. Michael is getting similar language now. Bohemian Rhapsody won four Oscars. Best Motion Picture — Drama at the Globes. Critics were typing their think-pieces when the statues were already on the shelf. Nobody was listening.
The international picture is striking. In France and the United Kingdom, Michael is pacing ahead of Bohemian Rhapsody at the same point in release. Japan was Bohemian Rhapsody’s single biggest overseas market, where it crossed $115M and became the highest-grossing live-action musical in the country’s history. Japan hasn’t opened yet for Michael. Jackson’s international footprint gives the film a path Bohemian Rhapsody never needed to invent: a global fanbase already trained to treat the music as event cinema.
Roughly three quarters of Bohemian Rhapsody’s total gross came from international markets. If Michael replicates anything close to that distribution, and the early data suggests it’s already exceeding Queen biopic international pace, the global ceiling rises sharply.
The open question is legs. Deadline’s own midday update puts the weekend as high as $85M to $95M, but notes the obvious caveat: whether this is fan-frontloaded. Bohemian Rhapsody opened well. Then it just kept going. Three months in wide release, propped up by an awards campaign nobody saw coming. People went back. Their parents went. Then their parents dragged their mates. Michael ends in 1988, before Jackson’s story entered its most turbulent chapter. Whether that gives audiences closure or leaves them wanting more is something only the next few weeks will answer. Right now, nobody seems to mind where it stops. Is MICHAEL on track to take the musical biopic crown from Bohemian Rhapsody?
Lionsgate’s reported target is $700M. Still roughly $200M short of Bohemian Rhapsody’s musical biopic record. They’re not pretending otherwise.
But studios lowball. And audiences don’t read Lionsgate’s internal memos.
Eighty-one percent of Thursday night audiences said they’d tell someone else to go. That’s not a divided crowd. Nobody predicted Bohemian Rhapsody. Not really.
Bohemian Rhapsody was the anomaly everyone said couldn’t happen. Michael has not beaten it yet. Right now, on opening weekend, it’s moonwalking into its rear-view mirror.