{"id":547364,"date":"2026-04-24T00:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547364\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T00:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:46:07","slug":"michael-starts-strong-overseas-with-18-5-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547364\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Michael’ Starts Strong Overseas With $18.5 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cMichael<\/a>\u201d is starting strong at international box office, generating $18.5 million on opening day. Those ticket sales include $16.6 million on Wednesday and $1.9 million in Tuesday\u2019s previews.<\/p>\n

\n\tLionsgate\u2019s musical biopic about the rise of Michael Jackson debuts in North America and 82 overseas markets on Friday. Through the weekend, \u201cMichael\u201d is poised to dominate over global box office charts with projections of $65 million to $75 million (or more) domestically and $75 million to $80 million internationally.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, the poor reviews from critics aren\u2019t slowing the King of Pop\u2019s roll. \u201cMichael\u201d had the strongest start in France with $2.6 million from 743 screens on Wednesday, followed by the United Kingdom and Ireland with $2.6 million, Italy with $1.3 million from 480 locations, Mexico with $1.1 million and Spain with $1.1 million from 520 screens. Universal, which is rolling out the film in international markets, estimates these figures are pacing ahead of the 2018 Queen-centric \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d and 2023\u2019s father-of-the-atomic-bomb drama \u201cOppenheimer\u201d in most territories; those films are two of the highest-grossing biopics in the past decade. <\/p>\n

\n\tAntoine Fuqua directed \u201cMichael,\u201d which charts the singer\u2019s early days in the Jackson 5 to becoming one of the biggest entertainers on the planet. Jaafar Jackson, the real-life nephew of Michael Jackson, is portraying the King of Pop in the film, with Colman Domingo and Nia Long playing his parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson.<\/p>\n

\n\tCritics have complained that \u201cMichael\u201d takes a sanitized look at the life of Jackson because it doesn\u2019t include the child sexual abuse allegations that were leveled against the singer later in his career. Initially, the screenplay had recounted a 1993 lawsuit against Jackson, but those sequences had to be removed after producers discovered a clause in the settlement with the young accuser that barred the depiction or mention of him in film or television. Now the film ends during the Bad tour in 1988. \u201cMichael\u201d cost at least $170 million to produce, making it one of the most expensive biopics of all time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMichael\u201d is starting strong at international box office, generating $18.5 million on opening day. Those ticket sales include…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,29683,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-michael","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}