Photo Credit: Davidson Luna
As the Michael Jackson biopic inches closer to $1 billion, the film surpasses two Lord of the Rings films in its box office gross.
Michael continues to grow larger than life, much like the career of the man on which it is based. Now, the biopic is fast approaching $1 billion, and it’s achieved yet another milestone: surpassing two Lord of the Rings films in all-time gross.
Over the weekend, the film earned an additional $13.6 million, $5.4 million of which came from Japan, where Michael Jackson has long been a popular figure. That brought its total haul to $959.6 million worldwide, overtaking both The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
The film now sits at #72 on the all-time box office chart. That makes it not only the highest-grossing music biopic of all time (and Lionsgate’s biggest film of all time), but the highest-grossing biopic of any genre ever.
In its first weekend alone, Michael easily made back its entire $200 million budget. The only film ahead of it this year remains The Super Mario Galaxy Movie at $1.07 billion—but given that picture’s appeal for children, that’s not terribly surprising.
For Michael, that billion-dollar mark is still very much on the horizon, even though the film has been available digitally since June 9. But that means the recent $959.6 million threshold is all the more impressive; audiences are still showing up for it in the theater even though they no longer need to.
Despite critics remaining divided on it, audiences are clearly hungry for Michael Jackson, which puts Lionsgate in a great position to churn out a sequel. To that end, at least 30% of a sequel has already been filmed, given the setbacks that hit the production of the first film, which required the final act to be retooled and reshot.
Interestingly, the sequel may not have director Antoine Fuqua at the helm, as he is already in the midst of a project with Netflix starring Denzel Washington about the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal. That means Lionsgate will be looking for a new director—and quickly at that. But insiders say that that’s already been taken care of, and that producer Graham King will be stepping into the director role for the Michael sequel.
Michael stars Michael Jackson’s real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop. The cast also includes Colman Domingo as patriarch Joseph Jackson and Nia Long as matriarch Katherine Jackson.