Michael might be a cowardly, cursed biopic but his fans are happy to live in a fantasy

The hit success of the critically reviled Michael Jackson movie shows that his fans only want to see the good – not the truth

It’s not unusual to see a gulf between the quality of a blockbuster hit as described by critics, and the greater acceptance of that film as determined by its viewing public. But it’s been a while since a movie quite as derided as Michael has been quite this big of a hit. This biography of pop star Michael Jackson is already one of the bigger-grossing musician biopics of all time; even with a steep second-weekend drop, it’s on its way to becoming one of the biggest global hits of 2026 so far.

Perhaps more notable, however, are the vast, chasm-sized reality gaps that have been opened up (or at least enlarged) by the film’s half-blessed, half-cursed existence. First, there’s the gap between the realities of Michael Jackson’s life and what this estate-approved biography is willing (and in some cases legally able) to depict – a disparity that’s part of any work of biographical fiction but that feels vaster here for a number of reasons. Scale over that one, and you might next encounter the related gap between the film that was originally planned, which was going to cover most or all of Jackson’s life, and the film that’s being released in theaters, which leaves off in 1988 before teasing a sequel. That change is owed in part to a bizarre snafu where the film-makers and estate didn’t realize they didn’t have the legal right to depict one of the people who accused Jackson of child molestation in 1993 (his estate claims this version of events to be “inaccurate and irrelevant”).