‘Michael’ Hits $1 Billion — And Not Everyone Is Cheering

Antoine Fuqua’s “Michael,” starring Jaafar Jackson as his late uncle, crossed $1 billion in global ticket sales on June 14, 2026, becoming the highest-grossing music biopic in box office history and surpassing the $911 million earned by 2018’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Released by Lionsgate on April 24, the film set an all-time debut record for the biopic genre with $97 million domestically and $219 million globally in its opening weekend [1, 3].

The milestone has reignited sharp debate over the film’s treatment of sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson. Dan Reed, director of the 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” — which featured accounts from Wade Robson and James Safechuck describing childhood abuse — told Variety that “Michael” “flips the truth” and presents Jackson as a harmless victim of his father’s abuse while making no meaningful attempt to address the accusers’ detailed testimony. The film ends in 1988, five years before Jordan Chandler’s allegations first became public in 1993, a structural choice Reed described as deliberate erasure [2].

Why It Sucks:

Michael Jackson Fans & The Jackson Estate

• A billion dollars proves no other artist compares. No music biopic — not Freddie Mercury, not Elvis Presley, not Elton John — has ever crossed the $1 billion threshold; for fans, the number is a hard, unarguable measure of Jackson’s singular cultural standing [1, 3].
• Jaafar’s casting gave the film a legitimacy studios can’t manufacture. Having Jackson’s own nephew portray him, with the estate’s blessing and full access to the music, meant fans were watching something the family believed in — not a licensed cash grab made over objections [1, 4].
• But even fans expected the film to do more with the controversy. Many Jackson supporters who believe the abuse allegations are false or exaggerated still wanted the film to directly confront and rebut them — instead of quietly sidestepping them by ending decades before the accusations began, which leaves the most contentious chapter of his life unaddressed and undefended [2, 4].

Abuse Survivors & Advocates

• A sanitized story just got a billion-dollar endorsement. Dan Reed told Variety that Fuqua’s film “glorifies a man who abused children” and that presenting Jackson as a Peter Pan figure wronged by his father — without examining his relationships with children — is not artistic restraint but active distortion [2].
• Ending in 1988 is a choice, not a limitation. The film stops five years before Chandler’s 1993 allegations went public and nearly a decade before Robson and Safechuck went on record with Reed — a timeline that ensures the audience never has to reconcile the music they love with what the accusers say happened [2, 3].
• The box office number lands as institutional validation. Robson and Safechuck have spent years in court and in the public arena trying to be heard; watching the film that structurally ignores their testimony earn $1 billion is not an abstraction — it is the culture industry voting, loudly, on whose version of events gets to exist [2].

Independent Filmmakers & Cinema Critics

• A billion dollars rewarded the safest possible version of this story. “Michael” is an estate-approved, controversy-smoothed, fan-service narrative — and its massive return is the exact signal that will lead studios to keep greenlit more of the same at the expense of original screenplays competing for wide-release slots [1, 4].
• Lionsgate’s biggest hit ever is a licensed IP vehicle, not an original idea. The studio’s record-setting achievement came not from a filmmaker’s vision but from acquiring rights to an existing celebrity myth — raising pointed questions about what kinds of films studios are actually willing to fund and risk on [1].
• Theater owners win the weekend but lose the argument. Record-breaking biopic opening weekends prop up exhibitors’ quarterly numbers, but a theatrical ecosystem increasingly dependent on legacy IP and franchise sequels steadily crowds out the mid-budget original films that once gave cinemas their cultural relevance beyond spectacle [3, 4].

Sources & Citations:

[1] Deadline: ‘Michael’ Movie Becomes Biggest Box Office Music Biopic Of All Time
[2] Variety: ‘Leaving Neverland’ Director Torches ‘Michael’ and Antoine Fuqua for Whitewashing Michael Jackson’s Alleged Abuse
[3] Billboard: ‘Michael’ Tops ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as Highest-Grossing Music Biopic
[4] Variety: ‘Michael’ Box Office: Biopic Opens to Record-Setting $97 Million