Michael

Lionsgate

Michael looks like it’s about to blow up the global box office, perhaps no great surprise for a biopic about Michael Jackson, one of the most famous musicians of all time. Some have already flocked to see it, and now Michael has just set a full-on Rotten Tomatoes audience score record in the wake of that.

Critics mostly disliked Michael, giving it a 40% Rotten Tomatoes score, which puts it among the worst-reviewed biopics of the last few years. Audiences? They cannot get enough of it. With well over a thousand reviews in, Michael has a 96% audience score, the highest on Rotten Tomatoes for any biopic.

The previous record-holder? That would be Austin Butler’s Elvis, one of the other most famous musicians in history. Critics liked it quite a bit more, giving it a 77%, so there was no yawning 56% gap between critics and audiences, as there currently is for Michael.

This split has sparked some discourse about whether critics were just “wrong,” or worse, purposefully biased against Michael Jackson due to the controversies and accusations in the latter half of his career/life, which the film does not cover because it simply does not cover those years. Though even the cast has teased a “sequel.” Critics, meanwhile, say they just don’t believe it’s a good movie, though there is a difference between what’s a “good” movie, perhaps, and what’s a clear crowd-pleaser. There are reports of theatrical experiences in which entire audiences sing and dance to the performances, which even critics rated as great.

One weird thing happened related to this, where the official Michael account tweeted that the film had received an A- CinemaScore, a very good rating, but CinemaScore does not release its ratings that early, and there wasn’t one registered on the site. There was, however, an A- score for Michael, the 1996 John Travolta movie that some believe was what was being used here to promote the film. The tweet remains up, however. (Update: CinemaScore has confirmed this is a rare, legitimate early grade, though a final one is coming later).

In the end, the only thing that matters is what audiences like and want to see. There are projections that Michael may earn $150 million globally its opening weekend, a film with a max budget of somewhere around $200 million, it’s reported. And it will get most of the way there in a weekend. I am curious if this could take on a Bohemian Rhapsody-type path, where the Freddy Mercury musical biopic went on to earn a stunning $910 million. And this is Michael Jackson, so that does not seem entirely impossible. Though Elvis, a similarly big star with similarly high audience scores, made $288 million instead. That did make it the second biggest musical biopic ever, however, behind Bohemian Rhapsody. So, quite the gap, and Michael seems like it will probably easily fill that.

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