'Michael' Hits Starz After Becoming the Highest-Grossing Biopic Ever

The numbers are real and they're still a little hard to believe. "Michael," Antoine Fuqua's sprawling biopic about the King of Pop, lands on Starz on August 10, and it's arriving with a record that most blockbusters would envy: it's now the highest-grossing biographical film in cinema history.

According to a streaming release announcement covered by Variety, the Lionsgate film will be available on all Starz apps and streaming platforms beginning August 10, with a linear TV premiere that same evening at 7 p.m. ET/PT. The move to streaming follows a theatrical window of 108 days, which, as Deadline reported in its coverage of the announcement, makes it Lionsgate's highest-grossing film of all time.

The math on this thing is staggering. Released April 24, "Michael" opened to $97.2 million domestically in its first weekend, the best-ever debut for a musical biopic, per Deadline. It kept going from there. By mid-June, it had passed the $911 million mark set by Bohemian Rhapsody, according to Forbes. On July 14, it crossed $1 billion globally. The final tally reported by Deadline sits at $372.3 million domestic and more than $1 billion worldwide, a figure that also puts it ahead of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer as the highest-grossing biopic of any kind ever made.

None of that would mean much if the movie itself wasn't doing something worth watching. The secret weapon here is Jaafar Jackson, the late pop star's actual nephew, making his film debut in the lead role. Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, in a review cited widely by the film's coverage, praised the newcomer for capturing the performer's look, voice, and stage presence, along with "the mixture of delicacy and steel that made Michael who he was." That kind of review lands differently when it comes from someone who clearly wasn't rooting for the film to work.

The ensemble backing him up is genuinely impressive: Colman Domingo as father Joe Jackson, Nia Long as mother Katherine, Larenz Tate as Motown's Berry Gordy, Miles Teller as entertainment lawyer John Branca, and Kat Graham as Diana Ross. The film chronicles Jackson's story from his Gary, Indiana childhood through the Jackson 5 era and up through the 1987 "Bad" tour, stopping well short of the controversies that came later -- a deliberate creative and legal choice that the production acknowledged early on.

Lionsgate's window strategy is worth noting. The studio resisted the impulse to rush the film to digital the moment box office momentum slowed, instead letting a 108-day run play out before a PVOD window opened in June and a physical release arrived in July. That kind of patience is increasingly rare, and as MovieWeb observed in its coverage, the numbers here may give other studios reason to think twice about compressing their own theatrical windows.

The audience reception confirmed what the box office suggested. Per Deadline's report on the streaming date, "Michael" earned an A- CinemaScore and a 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes -- numbers that suggest critics and fans weren't exactly aligned on this one, but the people actually buying tickets clearly thought it was worth it.

A sequel, focusing on the remainder of Jackson's career beyond 1979's Off the Wall, is reportedly in development at Lionsgate. If this first chapter is any indication, they'll take their time with it too.

Sources cited:
- Variety (https://variety.com/2026/film/news/michael-streaming-release-date-michael-jackson-starz-1236757504/)
- Deadline (https://deadline.com/2026/07/michael-streaming-date-1237004628/)
- Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers/2026/07/27/michael-streaming-strategy-shifts-to-starz-after-crossing-1-billion-at-box-office/)
- MovieWeb (https://movieweb.com/michael-streaming-date-starz/)