Michael Sequel Is Happening — What a $715 Million Payday Means for Lionsgate
TL;DR: Lionsgate's Michael Jackson biopic crossed $715 million worldwide, making it one of the highest-grossing music biopics ever. A sequel is now in active development. Here's what's in the first film, where to watch it globally, and what a second installment would actually need to do right.
A $715 million worldwide box office. That's the number that changes everything.
Three years after Bohemian Rhapsody proved audiences would pack theaters for a messy, imperfect rock biopic, Lionsgate arrived at a similar inflection point with Michael — its authorized portrait of Michael Jackson. The film didn't just perform well. It dominated. And now the studio is signaling, with careful public optimism, that a follow-up is already in development. For fans of the first film, for skeptics who skipped it, and for anyone trying to figure out where to watch it right now, here's what you need to know.
What the First Michael Film Actually Is
Michael (2025), directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson (the singer's nephew) as the King of Pop, runs 2 hours 28 minutes. It's available now for digital rental and purchase across the US, UK, and India.
The film covers roughly 1969 through the early 1990s — Jackson's childhood in the Jackson 5, his early solo career, and the making of Thriller. It's not a warts-and-all portrait. The Michael Jackson Estate co-financed the project and maintained script approval, which means certain uncomfortable periods get handled lightly. That's worth knowing going in.
The cast includes:
- Jaafar Jackson as Michael
- Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson (the demanding father)
- Nia Long as Katherine Jackson
- Miles Teller in supporting role
What's striking about the film — and I kept coming back to this — is how much it trusts physical performance over dialogue. Long stretches are essentially wordless, built on Jaafar Jackson's dancing and cinematographer Mauro Fiore's work with light and shadow in rehearsal spaces. The concert sequences, especially a reconstructed Thriller performance and a late-film recreation of the 1993 Dangerous World Tour, are genuinely spectacular. Fuqua shoots them with kinetic energy, handheld work close to the performer's body. You feel the physical cost of that kind of performance.
Colman Domingo's work as Joe Jackson is the most honest thing the film does — he plays the patriarch as a man whose drive and cruelty are genuinely inseparable. Nia Long gets compressed into supporting function, which is a recurring complaint from critics.
Box Office Reality Check
Michael earned $715 million at the worldwide box office, making it not only Lionsgate's biggest release of 2025 but one of the top-grossing music biopics ever made. For context: Rocketman (2019) earned $195 million globally and was considered a commercial success. Bohemian Rhapsody topped out at $910 million. Michael sits between them, but here's the distinction most trade coverage glosses over: Bohemian Rhapsody had 20th Century Fox's global distribution machine behind it, while Lionsgate is a mid-major studio that doesn't own theater chains or legacy output deals in most territories. Dollar for dollar, infrastructure considered, Michael's haul is arguably the more impressive commercial achievement.
India was one of the film's strongest markets outside North America and the UK. The Hindi-dubbed version performed particularly well in multiplex chains across Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru — reportedly earning over $22 million in India alone, per Box Office India's tracking. That's significant. It's also why the film's sequel momentum is stronger internationally than domestic box office alone suggests.
Where to Watch Michael Right Now
United States:
- Amazon Prime Video — available now for digital rental/purchase (English audio)
- Apple TV+ — rental/purchase available
- YouTube — rental/purchase available
United Kingdom:
- Amazon Prime Video UK — rental/purchase
- iTunes UK — rental/purchase
India:
- Amazon Prime Video India — available now (Hindi and English audio)
- JioCinema — not currently listed
- Netflix India — no confirmed deal
- Disney+ Hotstar — not currently available
Movie OTT's streaming tracker updates these windows in real time as licensing deals shift. Worth checking if your preferred platform isn't showing availability yet — sometimes films appear with 24-48 hours' notice.
The Hindi dub quality is notably good — better than the average Hollywood release, partly because the music sequences required careful lip-sync work. If you grew up with Thriller and Beat It in the 1980s and 1990s, there's a generational connection to this material that comes through even in translation.
What Lionsgate Actually Said About the Sequel
Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns told analysts during the studio's most recent earnings call: "We're very excited about where the Michael franchise is going. The success of the first film has opened up real creative possibilities for what comes next."
Notice what he didn't say. No director. No writer. No release window. That's deliberate. Studios in active development don't hand over timelines before deals close.
Jaafar Jackson, speaking to Variety ahead of the film's release, said: "I spent years preparing for this role. I wasn't trying to imitate my uncle — I was trying to understand what it cost him to be who he was." That line is actually the most useful frame for thinking about what a sequel might do.
The first film ends in the early 1990s. A second film would presumably deal with the period most people have the strongest — and most contested — feelings about. That's both the commercial opportunity and the creative trap.
Why a Sequel Gets Harder from Here
Here's the honest take: the first Michael film is a commercially successful picture that is also, in places, morally evasive. It covers the child abuse allegations against Jackson with a lightness that feels like a creative decision made under estate pressure rather than artistic conviction.
Most coverage frames the sequel as a natural next chapter in a franchise. The more interesting question is whether Lionsgate and the estate can produce a film about 1993-2009 Jackson that doesn't read as institutional PR. The first film earned its audience by staying in the safe zone of origin-story nostalgia, the kind of slow-burn pacing that worked for Walk the Line and Ray, where the subject's talent is the emotional engine and the darkness stays at the margins. A sequel set during the trial, the financial collapse, the physical deterioration, and the preparations for This Is It doesn't have that luxury. Nostalgia won't carry it.
What to watch for in the coming months:
- A confirmed screenwriter (John Logan's involvement for the sequel is unconfirmed)
- A production start date, likely 2026 at the earliest
- Whether Fuqua returns or Lionsgate pursues a different visual approach
- International co-production announcements, particularly given India's strong performance
What Happens Next
Lionsgate hasn't set a release date for Michael 2. Production hasn't formally begun. What the studio has confirmed is that development is active and that the sequel is a genuine creative priority. The commercial logic is airtight. A $715 million opening film almost always gets a follow-up greenlit.
The more interesting question is whether the second film can be creatively honest about a period that's genuinely contested. The first film is the text we have. It's worth watching (especially if you remember the 1980s) before the sequel conversation accelerates and the narrative gets locked down again.
For the latest international streaming availability, Movie OTT tracks current listings across India, the US, UK, and other regions updated weekly.
