'Michael' Hits Starz Streaming After Record-Breaking $1B Box Office Run

The numbers alone make the case. 'Michael,' Antoine Fuqua's big-swinging biopic of the King of Pop, crossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office earlier this year and has now made the move to living rooms, landing on Starz on August 10. According to a Starz announcement reported by Deadline, it's Lionsgate's highest-grossing film of all time, and it took a 108-day theatrical window before the studio let it out of theaters.

That opening weekend figure is worth sitting with. According to Deadline, 'Michael' debuted to $97.2 million domestic and $217 million worldwide, the best opening ever for a musical biopic. For context, that's a bar that had stood firm through 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' 'Elvis,' and every rockumentary-adjacent cash-grab in between. Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan cleared it by a wide margin.

The film stars Jaafar Jackson, the late singer's actual nephew, making his feature debut in the lead role alongside Juliano Valdi, who plays the younger Michael. It's a casting choice that was always going to invite scrutiny, and the reviews were, to put it charitably, mixed. According to CBR, the film earned mixed-to-negative notices from critics but a 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A- CinemaScore, per Deadline. That's the musical biopic playbook in full effect: critics pick at the hagiography, audiences don't care and buy tickets anyway.

The one performance critics couldn't really argue with was Jaafar's. Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote that the newcomer nails "the look, the voice, the electrostatic moves" along with the quality that made Jackson genuinely hard to pin down as a cultural figure. That's a real thing to pull off when you're stepping into the most scrutinized pair of sequined socks in pop history.

The ensemble around him is stacked. Colman Domingo plays Joe Jackson, and the film, per CBR, centers heavily on that father-son relationship as the axis around which Michael's rise becomes inseparable from damage. Nia Long is Katherine Jackson, with Kat Graham as Diana Ross and Larenz Tate as Berry Gordy rounding out the Motown wing of the cast. Miles Teller plays entertainment lawyer John Branca.

One thing 'Michael' doesn't do, and can't: cover the full arc. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, an earlier version of the script that included a dramatization of a sexual abuse accuser had to be scrapped because of a past legal settlement. A second film covering the rest of Jackson's career is, according to THR, still in development. What we have, then, is a film that ends in the late 1980s, somewhere around the 'Bad' tour, leaving 'Thriller,' the allegations, and the final two decades entirely off the table.

That's both a real narrative limitation and, honestly, a commercial strategy. Gleiberman's review in Variety floated the possibility of a biopic franchise. Lionsgate, sitting on the highest-grossing music biopic of all time, is not going to walk away from that. A sequel feels less like a creative choice than an inevitability.

For now, 'Michael' is the No. 1 title on Starz, according to FlixPatrol data cited by CBR, unseating 'Power Book III: Raising Kanan' from the top spot. You can get to it through the Starz app directly or by adding the channel through Prime Video, Hulu, Sling, and other providers. If you missed it theatrically, and given the numbers, a lot of people did not, this is the moment. The film's narrowed scope is a real issue. But Jaafar Jackson doing what he does in this movie is worth watching on its own terms.

Sources cited:
- Deadline (https://deadline.com/2026/07/michael-streaming-date-1237004628/)
- Variety (https://variety.com/2026/film/news/michael-streaming-release-date-michael-jackson-starz-1236757504/)
- TheGrio (https://thegrio.com/2026/07/29/michael-jackson-biopic-streaming-date-starz/)
- CBR (https://www.cbr.com/michael-jackson-biopic-starz-streaming-success-august-2026/)
- The Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/michael-jackson-biopic-spring-2026-release-1236327611/)
- Just Jared (https://www.justjared.com/2026/08/10/michael-is-now-streaming-heres-where-to-watch-the-record-breaking-michael-jackson-biopic-at-home/)