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‘Michael’ Fans Danced in the Aisles, Critics Be Damned
The biopic of the pop singer crushed box-office records on its opening weekend as admirers moonwalked to a movie that critics have savaged.
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Fans of Michael Jackson gathered for the world premiere of “Michael” in Berlin last week.
Credit...
Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press
By
Derrick Bryson Taylor
April 27, 2026,
5:04 a.m. ET
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They came in their sequined gloves and shiny loafers, their black fedoras and red leather jackets. They danced in the aisles and sang the hits at the top of their lungs. They moonwalked, kicked their legs and leaned like smooth criminals. They let bygones be bygones.
Critics have largely savaged “Michael,” the biopic of Michael Jackson that opened on Friday in theaters across the globe. One
dismissed it
as a “bland and barely competent daytime TV movie”; another as not a movie at all but a “
filmed playlist in search of a story
.” Yet to the legions of Jackson’s fans, the glossy film was just cause to celebrate the greatest pop star of all time.
Over the past few days, Jackson fans turned their local theaters into makeshift concert halls. Admirers broke out into dance at a showing in London. Others
shimmied and spun in the aisles
in Atlanta.
Countless fans dressed up as Jackson, including Grace Acosta, 35, who could not contain her excitement as she rushed into a movie theater in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan on Sunday, sporting a red “Thriller” jacket and matching pants.
“No one will ever compare to Michael Jackson,” she said as she dismissed talk of the allegations that have trailed the singer for years. “I believe that Michael Jackson never did something like that.”
Indeed, much of the criticism of the film, which the Jackson estate approved, has come from the fact that its story ends in 1988, to many people a too-convenient sidestepping of the accusations of child sexual abuse that later emerged (including as recently as
this year
). Yet, as Adam Fogelson, the chairman of Lionsgate, the studio that made the film, said in a recent statement, “If you give audiences what they want, they will come.”
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