You know it’s a great summer when myriad studios are hitting all-time company records at the global box office. Lionsgate, which fired up the heat wave this season with the Antoine Fuqua-directed Michael with a $97.2M domestic, $217.4M worldwide start, will see the Michael Jackson biopic become its highest-grossing movie ever this weekend. Michael is going into its seventh weekend.
Michael, which stands at $346.6M domestic through Thursday and well north of $508M abroad ($854.6M+ global), will pass the two top-grossing Lionsgate titles ever: 2013’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($865M WW) and 2012’s Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 ($868.5M lifetime WW; $829.7M initial theatrical run gross). Universal took foreign on Michael, sans Japan.
Speaking of which, that MJ-rich box office market, the last in the pic’s overseas tour, finally will open on June 12 via local distributor Kino in partnership with Lionsgate. The second-highest-grossing territory outside U.S./Canada for Jackson’s 2009 documentary, This Is It, was Japan at $57M, repping 21% of that Sony release’s $267M-plus global gross. The expectation is that Japan not only will send Micheal across the nine-century worldwide mark but deliver the pic’s producer Graham King a box office record that will beat his own, meaning Michael is poised to surpass GK’s four-time Oscar winner Bohemian Rhapsody (which finaled at $911M WW) as the highest-grossing musical biopic of all time.
Already the movie starring Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo, Miles Teller and Nia Long has outstripped the lifetime of Bohemian Rhapsody in several markets including domestic, the UK ($65M+), France ($51M+), Germany ($32M+), Mexico ($31M+), Brazil ($30M+), Australia ($29M+), Spain ($25M+), Italy ($28M+) and Netherlands ($13M+), to name a few.
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At the domestic B.O., Michael passed Bohemian Rhapsody ($216.6M) as the highest-grossing musical biopic stateside back on its 16th day of release. The movie has had remarkable weekend holds, dipping by 44% in its second weekend, 30% in Weekend 3, 31% in Weekend 4, 21% in Weekend 5 and 43% in Weekend 6.
Last weekend, Focus Features saw its highest-grossing movie ever at the domestic B.O. in Curry Barker’s Obsession, that horror romance now at $126.5M domestic, and well north of $171M+ worldwide.