‘Michael’ Opens With Staggering $12.6M in Previews, Eyes $90M+ Debut

UPDATE: Final Thursday tally was $12.6M.

Are we witnessing the beginning of the Michael Jackson cinematic universe?

The large divide between critics and audiences is real. 96% on RT, “A-” CinemaScore, 7.6/10 on IMDb. Reports of people dancing during screenings and clapping during the credits. This is a total polar opposite of what the reviews entailed. Furthermore, PostTrak stats for 'Michael': 5 stars, 88% positive and a massive 81% definite recommend. Nearly 60% of the audience were under 35.

Much like ‘Project Hail Mary,’ it’s populist entertainment; people couldn’t care less about the baggage that comes with Jackson, nor are they really bothered by the glossy messianic depiction.

The result is $13M in previews — well beyond expectations. It’s practically locked for a $90M opening weekend; it might even flirt with $100M. That’s a record for a music biopic, far surpassing “Straight Outta Compton” ($60M) and “Bohemian Rhapsody” ($50M), the latter went on to make $900M worldwide.

Here’s how things are looking, and I’m absolutely low-balling here because walk-up on this movie seems more indicative of performance than pre-sales: this film is looking, bare minimum, at a $90M domestic opening and $240M worldwide. It could very well be much more than that.

One of the big losers in this “Michael” narrative are critics, who tried their best to bury this movie, which is at its core a jukebox musical, but failed miserably. There’s no stopping this movie. Another loser is “Leaving Neverland” director Dan Reed, who made a 4-hour HBO documentary about sexual abuse allegations in 2019, attempting to reframe the narrative, which somehow succeeded at the time, only to see it all crashing down this weekend. In a statement, Reed bluntly tells THR, in relation to those allegations, that movie audiences “don’t care that he was a child molester.”

It’s now come to the point where talk of a sequel is on superspeed. Based on reports, around 35% of the footage for the sequel has already been shot, with screenwriter John Logan currently in the middle of writing the script. A fascinating decision given how the ‘90s led us into the “Wacko Jacko” phase of the singer’s career. A freak show of epic magnitude that, if done justice (which will likely not be the case), would result in a David Lynch movie. That era alone contained enough surreal imagery to feel ripped from “Eraserhead” or “Blue Velvet”: the oxygen chamber interviews; the Neverland Ranch constructed like a childlike simulation of reality; the veiled faces, masks, and the ever-present plastic surgery speculation that turned his face into something like a shifting identity puzzle. Jackson began to morph into something dreamlike, unstable, and vaguely nightmarish.

Now, come on, tell me you don’t want to see a sequel happen.