Michael (2026)

Michael is one of 2026's most fascinating cinematic case studies: a film that critics largely dismissed and audiences embraced with near-unprecedented fervor, creating the year's most dramatic Rotten Tomatoes split. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson — Michael Jackson's nephew — the film chronicles Michael Jackson's life from his childhood in Gary, Indiana through his transformation into the world's biggest entertainment icon and the controversies that shadowed his later career. Jaafar Jackson is, by every account, the film's undeniable reason for existence. His physical resemblance to his uncle is extraordinary, but it is his ability to replicate Jackson's musical performance style — the voice, the dance movements, the stage presence — that makes Michael work as spectacle. The concert sequences, particularly a reconstruction of the 1983 Motown 25 performance that introduced the moonwalk, are extraordinary. Fuqua's direction is slick but conventional — critics were correct that the biopic format elides Jackson's controversies too comfortably. But audiences answered: a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and $891 million worldwide on a $150 million budget makes Michael the year's most commercially potent non-animated film. Its $97 million domestic opening is the biggest ever for a musical biopic.