After a groundbreaking box-office run, the Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, moonwalked onto PVOD platforms this week. The movie defied pre-release controversy to break box-office records, and is on track to overtake Bohemian Rhapsody to become the biggest music biopic of all time worldwide. Domestically, Michael was able to outgross Christopher Nolan‘s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer. For all its commercial achievements, however, the movie hasn’t yet been able to hit the coveted $1 billion mark at the global box office, and now that it’s available to watch at home, it’s unclear if the film will have the legs to pull this off.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Michael was released in theaters worldwide on April 24. The movie features the King of Pop’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson, in the lead role and follows the icon’s early life and career. Michael had a difficult production, with the entire third act having to be redone due to legal reasons. This led to the budget escalating to a reported $200 million. But Lionsgate had full faith in the movie’s box-office potential, and the gamble paid off. Michael has so far grossed $355 million domestically and another $544 million from international markets for a global total of $900 million.
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.
‘Michael’ Has Been Embraced by Audiences
While it will be able to pass the $911 million benchmark set by Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018, as things stand, Michael may have a difficult time getting to the $1 billion mark. So far, only one blockbuster this year has managed to pass the milestone: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Michael‘s early success was enough, however, for Lionsgate to get cracking on a sequel that will track the King of Pop’s later life. Michael opened to mixed reviews, with a vocal contingent criticizing the filmmakers’ attempts to whitewash Jackson. Most others, however, were pleased with the performance sequences.
The movie now holds a 39% critics’ score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the 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.” It’s the film’s “Verified Hot” 97% audience score that has pushed it to these incredible box-office heights. The audience reception has also helped the movie secure spots on the iTunes and Amazon charts immediately after its digital release, according to FlixPatrol. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
