Here is a number worth sitting with: Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua, has grossed over $939 million worldwide as of this week. It is now the highest-grossing music biopic ever made. It holds a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Both things are true simultaneously, and that tension is the whole story.
A Pattern Hollywood Has Learned to Count On
Michael didn’t invent the sanitised biopic. It just perfected the formula. The Guardian noted it as one of several recent films presenting “sanitised” biographies of beloved musicians — placing it alongside Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), Elvis (2022), and Back to Black (2024) — and concluded bluntly that “when it comes to objectivity, integrity and veracity, audiences will always prioritise the chance to have a singsong.”
That line is either deeply cynical or simply honest, depending on your perspective. The box office record suggests it’s both.
Bohemian Rhapsody opened to a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes — critics found its portrayal of Freddie Mercury’s sexuality shallow, its timeline reshuffled for dramatic convenience, and its overall approach “safe” and “non-scandalous.” It went on to gross $910 million worldwide and win four Academy Awards including Best Actor. Elvis was skewered at Cannes for burying its subject under Baz Luhrmann’s aesthetic excess. It made $288 million globally. Back to Black, the Amy Winehouse film, was widely described as uncomfortable viewing for reasons of both craft and ethics. Audiences went anyway.
Rick Lyman, TV and film industry consultant, notes this has become one of the most reliable commercial patterns in Hollywood: critical rejection paired with audience enthusiasm, fuelled by nostalgia, spectacular performance, and a greatest-hits soundtrack. The formula works every time. Studios know it works. So they keep using it.
Why Michael Is the Most Extreme Case Yet
What separates Michael from its predecessors isn’t just scale — it’s the specific, documented reason the film ends where it ends.
The production originally filmed sequences depicting the 1993 child sexual abuse allegations against Jackson, including an action sequence recreating the police raid on Neverland Ranch. Those sequences were cut and reshoots were ordered after producers discovered that a settlement clause from 1993 barred any depiction of the accuser in film or television. The film was then rewritten to end at the 1988 Bad World Tour — years before the allegations emerged — at an additional cost of roughly $50 million.
The WBUR critic Sean Burns put it plainly, comparing the editorial decision to “an O.J. Simpson biopic ending with him winning the Heisman Trophy.” IndieWire’s Kate Erbland wrote that by removing the allegations, “the final film has been mostly stripped of any humanity, good and bad,” calling it “glossy, sanitised, and surprisingly dull.”
Audiences disagreed entirely — the film currently holds a 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, boasting the best audience score of any music biopic on record.
The Real Question This Pattern Raises
The gap between critics and audiences on films like Michael isn’t really about taste. It’s about what people are actually going to a biopic to experience. Critics go to learn something new. Audiences, largely, go to feel something familiar.
Screen Rant’s Liz Declan gave Michael a nine out of ten, calling it a “masterful biopic that lives up to the King of Pop’s legendary status.” Audiences raved about Jaafar Jackson’s uncanny performance, the music, and the emotional pull — with some noting they felt “more like they were at a concert than a movie,” framing that as a compliment.
That’s the core commercial logic of the sanitised biopic: it isn’t trying to be journalism. It’s trying to be a tribute act with a $200 million budget. And tribute acts sell out arenas.
Rick Lyman observes that the studios financing these films understand exactly what they’re selling. The question isn’t whether audiences will show up — Michael‘s $97 million opening weekend was the eighth-highest April opening ever, blowing past Straight Outta Compton ($60 million), Bohemian Rhapsody ($51 million), and Elvis ($31 million) in a single weekend. The question is whether the industry eventually pays a reputational price for consistently choosing spectacle over truth — and so far, the answer appears to be no.
What Comes Next
A sequel to Michael is in development, which would — by necessity — cover the period of Jackson’s life the first film avoided entirely. Whether the estate, the studio, and the filmmakers find a way to reckon honestly with that era, or whether they find another creative workaround, will say something significant about whether Hollywood has learned anything from the critical pile-on.
The pattern isn’t going away. As long as audiences respond with one score and critics with another, studios will keep splitting the difference — and cashing the cheque.
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