Michael

Michael hit theaters April 24, 2026: a musical biopic of Michael Jackson’s rise, currently moonwalking toward a billion worldwide on a production budget north of $165 million. I walked in having never owned a Jackson record. I was not really a fan. I expected a corporate estate polish job. I walked out ready to campaign for Oscars. The most expensive biopic ever made is also the sharpest one in years, and critics calling it “sanitized” walked past the trick it pulls in plain sight.

The film opens in 1966 Gary, Indiana. Steelworker Joe Jackson drills his five sons into a band with the youngest, Michael, out front. They sign to Motown, the hits land, and the family trades a cramped house for a California mansion. Michael, played by his real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson in a screen debut, is the engine. Colman Domingo plays the father riding that engine for everything it is worth.

Jaafar Jackson is fantastic. At first you clock the hire as nepotism insurance: lock the estate, keep the likeness in the family. Then he starts speaking and sliding across the stage, and the training shows. The dances. The voice. The demeanor shift when business is on the table. For anyone who missed it: Michael Jackson was a ruthless businessman, and Jaafar plays that. I hoped we would get the Beatles catalog buy out from under Paul McCartney; that yarn stays offscreen. When awards season drifts toward louder or weepier work, remember that carrying a 127-minute film on pure physical charisma is the harder job. Jaafar holds it the whole way.

There is a structure trick here, and I loved it. Jackson’s later life tangled into abuse allegation cases that wrecked his life and legacy. This movie includes none of that. Partly because that is not the chapter it is telling. Partly, and conveniently, the creators lacked the legal rights; commercial rights to those stories were tied up in settlements with accusers. So Michael 2026 is Jackson’s life up to a point, yes, but more than that it is a father-son character drama between Michael and Joe, and it plays out beautifully. Joe builds the band under threat of a belt, signs Motown and pockets the leverage, then refuses to let his most gifted son walk when solo offers arrive. Michael’s arc becomes one long campaign to get out from under that control. It is a smart way around covering an entire life, and it is simply a better story. I find most biopics boring. I nearly skipped this for that reason. Focusing on Michael and Joe instead of a beat-for-beat life parade was far more satisfying.

Ending at Wembley in 1988 is the most disciplined call in the film. Michael alone, opening his first solo tour, finally free of his father, standing on top of the world. One prominent critic compared stopping there to an O.J. Simpson biopic that ends with the Heisman. Great line for a review. Terrible read of this movie. Everything after that moment in real life collapses: trials, tabloids, money ruin, early death in a rented mansion. This picture set out to elevate how people remember the man. Mission accomplished. The father-son focus already made it more interesting than a full obituary. Most music biopics send you home depressed. Walking out of Michael, legacy fans might say they miss him, but for two hours he is alive again, and you want the music on the drive home. There is a reason the catalog climbed the charts again after release. The movie ended on optimism. A funeral would have killed that.

Do not make a sequel. Jackson is the most beloved he has been in fifteen years. The catalog is charting. People say the name with warmth. A second film has only one place to go: the trials and the death, capped by a funeral. That sequel poisons every ounce of goodwill this one spent two hours earning. Look at Wicked: split what should have been one movie, first half nearly a billion, second half losing the momentum behind a sadder turn, thinner hum-along, and a press cycle that kept souring the room. People saw it once or skipped part two. Michael is the opposite beast. It sends you out singing and sends you back for a second and third ticket. Repeat business is how you actually get to a billion. A grim follow-up buries that phenomenon next to the man.