There is no bigger movie moment in April than what happens on April 24 when Lionsgate releases "Michael," the authorized biopic of Michael Jackson's life. This is not a small film. Antoine Fuqua is directing, Jaafar Jackson, Michael's actual nephew, is playing Michael, and the supporting cast includes Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Larenz Tate, and Laura Harrier. Lionsgate is positioning this as a global event, the kind of theatrical release designed to pull people who normally wait for streaming back into the multiplex. Given what the box office has already done this year, the timing is either brilliant or a very high-pressure gamble.
The 2026 box office is having its best January-through-April run since before COVID. By April 8, domestic revenue had crossed $2.113 billion, a 23.5 percent increase over the same period in 2025. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie crossed $300 million domestically in its second weekend and passed $600 million globally. That kind of momentum sets a high bar, and it also sets a receptive audience. People are going to theaters again. The question for "Michael" is whether casual moviegoers who grew up with Jackson's music, younger viewers who know him mostly through nostalgia and controversy, and the dedicated fan base who has been tracking this film for years will all show up in the same opening weekend.
Casting Jaafar Jackson was the central creative decision this entire project hinged on. He is Michael's nephew, the son of Jermaine Jackson, and he is not a trained actor in the traditional sense. He is a musician who grew up inside the family. The argument for casting him was always that nobody else could carry the physicality and the music without it becoming a caricature. The argument against was that biopic roles require technical craft that performing lineage alone cannot provide. From the trailers, Jaafar holds the screen. Whether he can sustain that across two-plus hours of a film that presumably deals with the allegations against Jackson, the Neverland years, the trial, and the creative genius simultaneously is a different question.
The film has the full cooperation of the Jackson estate, which is both an asset and a complication. Estate-authorized biopics tend to be more reverential than revealing. They give filmmakers access to the music and the imagery, which matters enormously when you are making a film about someone whose work is inseparable from his visual presence. What they often restrict is the narrative freedom to go where the story gets uncomfortable. Antoine Fuqua is not a director who flinches from darkness. His filmography, from Training Day to The Equalizer to Emancipation, suggests someone willing to sit in difficult material. Whether the estate's authorization came with constraints on how far the film can actually go is something critics will likely focus on immediately after the first screenings.
Colman Domingo as Joseph Jackson is arguably the most intriguing casting in the film. Domingo is one of the best actors working right now, and Joseph Jackson's relationship with his children, including the discipline, the abuse allegations, and the complicated pride, is the kind of material that a performer of Domingo's ability can turn into something genuinely hard to watch. Nia Long and Larenz Tate round out a cast that grounds the film in Black Hollywood talent at every level, which matters for a story about one of the most influential Black artists in the history of recorded music.
The controversy surrounding Michael Jackson's legacy is not going away, and any honest assessment of this film has to acknowledge that reality. The Leaving Neverland documentary, released in 2019, reshaped public perception for a significant portion of the audience this film is trying to reach. The estate has consistently disputed those claims and continues to do so. A biopic made with estate cooperation will almost certainly present a particular version of that history, and viewers will arrive with their own conclusions already formed. That tension, between the music and the allegations, between the genius and the accusations, is what makes this film culturally significant regardless of whether it is cinematically excellent.
"Michael" opens in theaters nationwide on April 24. Given the box office trajectory this year and the sheer size of Jackson's global audience, it will almost certainly open big. Whether it earns the kind of sustained conversation that turns a biopic into something people are still discussing weeks later depends entirely on whether Fuqua found a way to make the film honest as well as spectacular.