Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in a poster image for Michael (2026)Image via Lionsgate Films
After an infamously uneven run over the last couple of years, Lionsgate is ready to rebound. This weekend, the studio released its controversial Michael Jackson biopic, which exceeded already-bullish projections to deliver a record-breaking debut at the box office. Later this year, Lionsgate will also release The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, the second prequel in the dystopian action franchise. Michael delivered the studio’s biggest debut since The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which was released three years ago. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Michael survived a highly dramatic production that reportedly saw a major creative overhaul to the third act and conflicts between the filmmakers and Jackson’s estate. The film’s release has also attracted renewed attention to the longstanding abuse allegations against the King of Pop. The movie has been criticized for omitting this aspect of Jackson’s life entirely.
However, it has clearly struck a chord with fans. Michael delivered the biggest-ever box-office debut for a biopic, overtaking not only Bohemian Rhapsody but also Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer. Starring Jaafar Jackson as his iconic pop star uncle, the movie holds a 38% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 97% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The site’s consensus reads, “While Jaafar Jackson’s smooth moves bring the King of Pop to uncanny life, this musical biopic mostly plays like a ‘greatest hits’ album that could’ve benefited from including liner notes to give actual insight into the icon.”
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Here’s How Much ‘Michael’ Grossed at the Box Office This Weekend
Produced on a massive reported budget of $200 million, Michael grossed just under $100 million domestically and more than $215 million worldwide in its opening weekend. A path to the $1 billion mark lies ahead, and, given near-unanimous audience praise, it seems highly achievable. Were the movie to hit this milestone, it would have overtaken both Bohemian Rhapsody and Oppenheimer to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time. Also starring Colman Domingo, Miles Teller, and Nia Long, the movie could also spawn a sequel that tackles the second half of Jackson’s life and career. A significant portion of footage that was edited out of the first film could reportedly be used in a second installment. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
