After Just One Weekend, Michael Jackson Film Ranks Among 10 Highest-Grossing Music Biopics Worldwide: Find Out Where

The Michael Jackson film Michael grossed $217.3 million worldwide in its opening weekend, according to boxofficemojo.com.  That already places it at No. 3 on Billboard’s list of music biopics with the highest worldwide grosses. How high will it climb on that list? Jackson has a long history of ranking No. 1 on lists, dating back to The Jackson 5 landing their first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with “I Want You Back” in 1970, but that will be a tough assignment in this case. The all-time top-grossing music biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, grossed $910.8 million worldwide.

Michael grossed $97 million over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada alone. That’s the highest opening-weekend domestic gross ever for a music biopic, eclipsing the mark set by Straight Outta Compton in 2015 ($60 million).

Michael grossed more than four times as much domestically in its opening weekend as the 2009 concert film/documentary hybrid Michael Jackson’s This Is It, which grossed 23.2 million in its opening weekend in October 2009. That film went on to gross $268 million worldwide.

Of note: Graham King, who co-produced Michael with longtime Jackson associates John Branca and John McClain, also co-produced Bohemian Rhapsody and a third music biopic on this list, Jersey Boys, the story of the Four Seasons.

Here are the highest-grossing biopics of musicians in terms of worldwide box office. We didn’t include a few high-grossing films about real-life music personalities because the subjects are not well-known music stars in their own right. These include The Sound of Music (which tells the story of Maria von Trapp and the Trapp Family Singers); Green Book (which deals with a road trip taken by pianist and composer Don Shirley); Florence Foster Jenkins (about an heiress and hopelessly untalented soprano by that name); and Music of the Heart (about violinist and music educator Roberta Guaspari). Meryl Streep starred in the latter two films.

Here are the 25 biopics of music stars with the highest worldwide grosses.