It took a King of Pop to dethrone a Queen. The Michael Jackson biopic Michael has officially become the highest-grossing music biopic ever made, surpassing the Freddie Mercury blockbuster Bohemian Rhapsody with a staggering $911.9 million at the worldwide box office — and it isn't done yet.
From King of Pop to King of the Box Office
Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson in the lead role, Michael crossed the finish line on Friday, edging past Bohemian Rhapsody's lifetime haul of $910.9 million to set a new benchmark for the genre. The film has taken $358.6 million at the domestic box office, with a further $553.3 million rolling in from international markets — a split that reflects its enormous global appeal.
What makes the achievement all the more remarkable is that both record-breaking films share the same producer. Graham King, who previously took home the Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody, has now beaten his own record — a feat that few producers in Hollywood history can claim.
"It makes ya wanna scream" — as Michael and Janet Jackson once sang, the sentiment feels entirely apt right now.
The film was released on 24 April and has been building momentum ever since. This week it arrived in Japan, a territory analysts believe could tip the total past the coveted $1 billion mark — which would make Michael only the second film of 2026 to reach that milestone, after Universal's Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
A Rocky Road to the Record Books
The path to box office glory was far from smooth. Lionsgate and Universal, who co-distributed the film, were forced to carry out $50 million worth of reshoots after the Jackson estate flagged a significant issue with the screenplay. Written by John Logan, the original script had inadvertently dramatised a scene involving one of Jackson's accusers — someone who was never meant to appear in the film at all. The costly reshoot gamble has, by any measure, paid off handsomely.
Before overtaking Bohemian Rhapsody, Michael had already knocked Elvis off its perch, making its rise through the biopic record books swift and decisive.
Could It Topple Oppenheimer Too?
Here's where things get truly extraordinary. Having claimed the music biopic crown, Michael now has its sights set on a far bigger prize: the title of the highest-grossing biographical film of all time. That record currently belongs to Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the Oscar-winning drama starring Cillian Murphy, which concluded its theatrical run with approximately $975 million worldwide.
With Michael sitting at $911.9 million and still pulling audiences in international markets including Russia — where it has already collected $10 million — the gap has narrowed to less than $65 million. With Japan's opening weekend still to be counted, the all-time biopic record is very much within reach.
For Lionsgate's motion picture division, led by chair Adam Fogelson, this is the kind of vindication that makes those $50 million reshoots feel like small change. A billion dollars and potentially the greatest biographical film of all time — not bad for the King of Pop's big-screen comeback.
