A music biopic just entered the all-time top 100 highest-grossing films in the history of cinema. Not the top 100 music films. Not the top 100 biographical films. The top 100 films, period. Every genre, every decade, every studio, every franchise. The list that contains Avatar and Titanic and every Avengers movie and every film that Hollywood has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars building toward.
Michael Jackson’s biographical film just walked into that list and it is still moving up. I want to show you every film it has already passed. Not just the music films. Every film. The names on this list are going to surprise you. Some of them are films you grew up watching. Some of them are films that won Academy Awards.
Some of them are sequels to the most commercially successful franchises in the histories of cinema. All of them made more money at the global box office than anyone projected Michael would make when it opened on April 24th, 2026 and all of them are now behind it. Stay with me because in part four, I am going to show you the two films that are sitting directly above Michael on the all-time chart right now, this week, today.
The films it is about to pass in the next few days. And the number that sits above both of them that the industry has never discussed in the context of a music biopic until this year. Let’s start with where the film is right now. $854 million worldwide. That is the current global total as of this weekend. Six weeks in theaters.
The film opened on April 24th, 2026 to $97 million domestic. The biggest opening weekend in the history of music biopics. It dropped 44% in its second weekend when the industry It returned to number one in its fourth weekend, something that happens to almost no film at that stage of its theatrical run.
It has added tens of millions of dollars per week consistently with week-over-week drop rates that have been among the best for any comparable release in recent memory. $854 million places Michael at number 113 on the all-time global box office chart. The comprehensive list that ranks every film ever released in every territory in every language adjusted to a single comparable figure.
113 out of every film ever made now. The films it has already passed because this is the part of the story that the box office coverage has been reporting without fully stopping to explain what it means. The Da Vinci Code, the 2006 Ron Howard film based on Dan Brown’s novel starring Tom Hanks as a Harvard symbologist uncovering a religious conspiracy that connected to the history of the Catholic Church.
One of the most discussed and most controversial films of its decade, a cultural phenomenon that generated best-seller sales, international controversy, and a global audience of hundreds of millions of people who had read the book and felt the specific urgency of needing to see the story on screen.
The film had the promotional backing of Sony Pictures and the specific commercial momentum of a source novel that had sold 80 million copies. Worldwide total worldwide gross $801.3 million. Michael passed it. Jumanji: The Next Level, the 2019 sequel to the 2017 Jumanji reboot, the continuation of a franchise that had surprised the entire when the 2017 entry crossed $1 billion with a cast that included Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan.
The Next Level was backed by the specific commercial machinery of a franchise that had already proven its global appeal. It opened to strong numbers on the strength of audience goods toward the previous installment and the pulling power of one of the most commercially reliable casts in Hollywood. Total worldwide gross, $801.7 million.
Michael passed it. Shrek the Third, the tale of the 2000s animated sequel to one of the most beloved animated franchises in the history of cinema. By the time Shrek the Third was released, the franchise had already generated more than a billion dollars from the first two films, had won the first Academy Award for best animated feature, and had established itself as one of the defining animated properties of its era.
DreamWorks Animation’s full promotional infrastructure was behind it. The global audience for Shrek was enormous and loyal and had already proven multiple times that they would show up for new entries in the series. Total worldwide gross, $808.3 million. Michael passed it. I want to pause on these three films specifically because they represent something important.
They are not obscure. They are not films from 40 years ago that have been overtaken by inflation-adjusted revisionism. The Da Vinci Code was one of the most talked about films of 2006. Jumanji: The Next Level was one of the most commercially successful sequels of 2019. Shrek the Third was part of a franchise that defined animated cinema for an entire decade.
All three of them sit on the all-time chart because they had genuine commercial power behind them. Global audiences, established franchises, major studio backing, and the specific promotional infrastructure that turns the film into an event rather than just a movie. All three of them are now behind a music biopic that the critics gave 38% on Rotten Tomatoes and that stars a first-time actor playing his deceased uncle.
But we are not done with the list. Transformers: Age of Extinction, the 2014 fourth installment in Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise. Starring Mark Wahlberg in a new lead role after the Shia LaBeouf trilogy concluded. A film that demonstrated the specific commercial durability of the Transformers brand in international markets, particularly China, where it performed at a level that few Western films had matched.
Total worldwide gross, $845 million. Michael passed it this weekend. These films collectively represent hundreds of millions of dollars in production and marketing investment, years of franchise building, and the combined commercial power of some of the most reliable brands in the history of Hollywood.
And a biographical film about a musician who has been dead for 16 years has walked past all of them in 6 weeks. Now, part four, the two films sitting directly above Michael on the all-time chart right now. The films it is about to pass this week. Inside Out, Pixar’s 2015 animated film about the emotional landscape of an 11-year-old girl navigating a move to a new city.
Directed by Pete Doctor, the filmmaker behind Up and Monsters, Inc., winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature. Certified fresh at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, described by critics and audiences alike as one of the best animated films Pixar has ever made, which is saying something given Pixar’s catalog.
A film that worked for children because of the adventure and for adults because of the emotional sophistication of its exploration of memory, change, and loss. Total worldwide gross, 859.1 million dollars. The gap between Michael and Inside Out is $5 million. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the 2022 sequel to Black Panther, released by Marvel Studios as part of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, directed by Ryan Coogler.
A film that was made under extraordinary circumstances, honoring the legacy of Chadwick Boseman after his death while simultaneously introducing new characters and continuing the story of Wakanda. The specific emotional weight that the film carried, the collective grief of an audience that had loved Boseman and [clears throat] was watching the story continue without him, gave it a quality that went beyond the normal commercial appeal of a Marvel release.
Total worldwide gross, 859.2 million dollars. The gap between Michael and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is also $5 million. Inside Out won an Academy Award. It was made by the most critically acclaimed animation studio in the world. It carries a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was part of the highest-grossing franchise in the history of cinema.
It carried a cultural significance that extended beyond the film itself into a shared moment of collective mourning and celebration. Both of them are about to be passed by a film that critics gave 38%. A film that audiences gave 97%. The most dramatic critic audience divide in the history of the Rotten Tomatoes platform.
A film that had 22 days of reshoots, a budget that reportedly climbed toward $200 million and a lead actor who had never appeared in a film before this one. At the current weekly earnings rate, Michael passes Inside Out and Black Panther Wakanda Forever before the end of this week, possibly before the weekend.
And when it passes them, the next film on the all-time chart is Bohemian Rhapsody, $911 million. The all-time record for the highest-grossing music biopic in history. The film that the music film industry has been pointing at for 8 years as the ceiling of what is possible when a biographical film about a musician connects with a global audience at full scale.
The film that Michael has been chasing since its opening weekend and that is now approximately $57 million away. At the current weekly rate, Bohemian Rhapsody falls within 2 weeks. Japan has not yet opened. When Bohemian Rhapsody falls and Michael takes the all-time music biopic record, it lands at number 80 on the all-time global box office chart, top 80.
Out of every film ever made in every language and every country across the entire history of cinema. And the number above Bohemian Rhapsody on that chart, the number that nobody was seriously discussing in the context of a music biopic 3 months ago is $1 billion. 60 films have crossed $1 billion at the global box office.
Avatar, Titanic, every Avengers film, the top entries in the Fast and Furious franchise, The Dark Knight, Jurassic World. These are the films that define what is commercially possible at the highest level of the movie business. The club is small and exclusive and has never contained a music biopic. Industry projections, based on the film’s current trajectory and the Japan factor, suggests that $1 billion is no longer theoretical.
The pre-sale data from Japan is, by accounts from people close to the distribution, among the strongest seen for any Western film in that market in recent years. Bohemian Rhapsody’s Japanese run contributed approximately $90 million to its $911 million total. Michael Jackson’s connection to Japan is deeper than Queen’s, more personal, more sustained, more generationally distributed across three generations of Japanese audiences who have maintained a relationship with his music that has no parallel in the history of any Western
artist’s reception in that market. If Japan performs at the level the pre-sale data suggests, if the awards season conversation continues to build around Colman Domingo’s performance as Joe Jackson, if the week-over-week holding power that the film has demonstrated continues into its seventh and eighth weeks, $1 billion is not an aspiration.
It is a projection. The 61st film to ever cross $1 billion at the global box office, the first music biopic to ever do so. A film about a man who has been
Michael Jackson’s Biopic Just Entered The All-Time Top 100 — The Movies It Beat Will Shock You
A music biopic just entered the all-time top 100 highest-grossing films in the history of cinema. Not the top 100 music films. Not the top 100 biographical films. The top 100 films, period. Every genre, every decade, every studio, every franchise. The list that contains Avatar and Titanic and every Avengers movie and every film that Hollywood has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars building toward.
Michael Jackson’s biographical film just walked into that list and it is still moving up. I want to show you every film it has already passed. Not just the music films. Every film. The names on this list are going to surprise you. Some of them are films you grew up watching. Some of them are films that won Academy Awards.
Some of them are sequels to the most commercially successful franchises in the histories of cinema. All of them made more money at the global box office than anyone projected Michael would make when it opened on April 24th, 2026 and all of them are now behind it. Stay with me because in part four, I am going to show you the two films that are sitting directly above Michael on the all-time chart right now, this week, today.
The films it is about to pass in the next few days. And the number that sits above both of them that the industry has never discussed in the context of a music biopic until this year. Let’s start with where the film is right now. $854 million worldwide. That is the current global total as of this weekend. Six weeks in theaters.
The film opened on April 24th, 2026 to $97 million domestic. The biggest opening weekend in the history of music biopics. It dropped 44% in its second weekend when the industry It returned to number one in its fourth weekend, something that happens to almost no film at that stage of its theatrical run.
It has added tens of millions of dollars per week consistently with week-over-week drop rates that have been among the best for any comparable release in recent memory. $854 million places Michael at number 113 on the all-time global box office chart. The comprehensive list that ranks every film ever released in every territory in every language adjusted to a single comparable figure.
113 out of every film ever made now. The films it has already passed because this is the part of the story that the box office coverage has been reporting without fully stopping to explain what it means. The Da Vinci Code, the 2006 Ron Howard film based on Dan Brown’s novel starring Tom Hanks as a Harvard symbologist uncovering a religious conspiracy that connected to the history of the Catholic Church.
One of the most discussed and most controversial films of its decade, a cultural phenomenon that generated best-seller sales, international controversy, and a global audience of hundreds of millions of people who had read the book and felt the specific urgency of needing to see the story on screen.
The film had the promotional backing of Sony Pictures and the specific commercial momentum of a source novel that had sold 80 million copies. Worldwide total worldwide gross $801.3 million. Michael passed it. Jumanji: The Next Level, the 2019 sequel to the 2017 Jumanji reboot, the continuation of a franchise that had surprised the entire when the 2017 entry crossed $1 billion with a cast that included Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan.
The Next Level was backed by the specific commercial machinery of a franchise that had already proven its global appeal. It opened to strong numbers on the strength of audience goods toward the previous installment and the pulling power of one of the most commercially reliable casts in Hollywood. Total worldwide gross, $801.7 million.
Michael passed it. Shrek the Third, the tale of the 2000s animated sequel to one of the most beloved animated franchises in the history of cinema. By the time Shrek the Third was released, the franchise had already generated more than a billion dollars from the first two films, had won the first Academy Award for best animated feature, and had established itself as one of the defining animated properties of its era.
DreamWorks Animation’s full promotional infrastructure was behind it. The global audience for Shrek was enormous and loyal and had already proven multiple times that they would show up for new entries in the series. Total worldwide gross, $808.3 million. Michael passed it. I want to pause on these three films specifically because they represent something important.
They are not obscure. They are not films from 40 years ago that have been overtaken by inflation-adjusted revisionism. The Da Vinci Code was one of the most talked about films of 2006. Jumanji: The Next Level was one of the most commercially successful sequels of 2019. Shrek the Third was part of a franchise that defined animated cinema for an entire decade.
All three of them sit on the all-time chart because they had genuine commercial power behind them. Global audiences, established franchises, major studio backing, and the specific promotional infrastructure that turns the film into an event rather than just a movie. All three of them are now behind a music biopic that the critics gave 38% on Rotten Tomatoes and that stars a first-time actor playing his deceased uncle.
But we are not done with the list. Transformers: Age of Extinction, the 2014 fourth installment in Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise. Starring Mark Wahlberg in a new lead role after the Shia LaBeouf trilogy concluded. A film that demonstrated the specific commercial durability of the Transformers brand in international markets, particularly China, where it performed at a level that few Western films had matched.
Total worldwide gross, $845 million. Michael passed it this weekend. These films collectively represent hundreds of millions of dollars in production and marketing investment, years of franchise building, and the combined commercial power of some of the most reliable brands in the history of Hollywood.
And a biographical film about a musician who has been dead for 16 years has walked past all of them in 6 weeks. Now, part four, the two films sitting directly above Michael on the all-time chart right now. The films it is about to pass this week. Inside Out, Pixar’s 2015 animated film about the emotional landscape of an 11-year-old girl navigating a move to a new city.
Directed by Pete Doctor, the filmmaker behind Up and Monsters, Inc., winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature. Certified fresh at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, described by critics and audiences alike as one of the best animated films Pixar has ever made, which is saying something given Pixar’s catalog.
A film that worked for children because of the adventure and for adults because of the emotional sophistication of its exploration of memory, change, and loss. Total worldwide gross, 859.1 million dollars. The gap between Michael and Inside Out is $5 million. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the 2022 sequel to Black Panther, released by Marvel Studios as part of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, directed by Ryan Coogler.
A film that was made under extraordinary circumstances, honoring the legacy of Chadwick Boseman after his death while simultaneously introducing new characters and continuing the story of Wakanda. The specific emotional weight that the film carried, the collective grief of an audience that had loved Boseman and [clears throat] was watching the story continue without him, gave it a quality that went beyond the normal commercial appeal of a Marvel release.
Total worldwide gross, 859.2 million dollars. The gap between Michael and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is also $5 million. Inside Out won an Academy Award. It was made by the most critically acclaimed animation studio in the world. It carries a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was part of the highest-grossing franchise in the history of cinema.
It carried a cultural significance that extended beyond the film itself into a shared moment of collective mourning and celebration. Both of them are about to be passed by a film that critics gave 38%. A film that audiences gave 97%. The most dramatic critic audience divide in the history of the Rotten Tomatoes platform.
A film that had 22 days of reshoots, a budget that reportedly climbed toward $200 million and a lead actor who had never appeared in a film before this one. At the current weekly earnings rate, Michael passes Inside Out and Black Panther Wakanda Forever before the end of this week, possibly before the weekend.
And when it passes them, the next film on the all-time chart is Bohemian Rhapsody, $911 million. The all-time record for the highest-grossing music biopic in history. The film that the music film industry has been pointing at for 8 years as the ceiling of what is possible when a biographical film about a musician connects with a global audience at full scale.
The film that Michael has been chasing since its opening weekend and that is now approximately $57 million away. At the current weekly rate, Bohemian Rhapsody falls within 2 weeks. Japan has not yet opened. When Bohemian Rhapsody falls and Michael takes the all-time music biopic record, it lands at number 80 on the all-time global box office chart, top 80.
Out of every film ever made in every language and every country across the entire history of cinema. And the number above Bohemian Rhapsody on that chart, the number that nobody was seriously discussing in the context of a music biopic 3 months ago is $1 billion. 60 films have crossed $1 billion at the global box office.
Avatar, Titanic, every Avengers film, the top entries in the Fast and Furious franchise, The Dark Knight, Jurassic World. These are the films that define what is commercially possible at the highest level of the movie business. The club is small and exclusive and has never contained a music biopic. Industry projections, based on the film’s current trajectory and the Japan factor, suggests that $1 billion is no longer theoretical.
The pre-sale data from Japan is, by accounts from people close to the distribution, among the strongest seen for any Western film in that market in recent years. Bohemian Rhapsody’s Japanese run contributed approximately $90 million to its $911 million total. Michael Jackson’s connection to Japan is deeper than Queen’s, more personal, more sustained, more generationally distributed across three generations of Japanese audiences who have maintained a relationship with his music that has no parallel in the history of any Western
artist’s reception in that market. If Japan performs at the level the pre-sale data suggests, if the awards season conversation continues to build around Colman Domingo’s performance as Joe Jackson, if the week-over-week holding power that the film has demonstrated continues into its seventh and eighth weeks, $1 billion is not an aspiration.
It is a projection. The 61st film to ever cross $1 billion at the global box office, the first music biopic to ever do so. A film about a man who has been
