Michael Jackson's nephew Jaafar Jackson had never appeared in a film before he was cast to play his uncle in Antoine Fuqua's biographical drama Michael. The film opens in theaters April 24 — one week from today. The trailer has already been watched 116 million times in 24 hours, making it the most-viewed music biopic trailer ever and the largest launch in Lionsgate history. It surpassed Taylor Swift's Eras Tour trailer (96.1 million views) and Bob Marley's One Love (60.1 million). The film hasn't opened yet and it's already rewritten a record that stood less than three years.
Something is happening here that goes beyond regular movie marketing.
The Film Itself
Fuqua's Michael follows Jackson's life from his involvement in the Jackson 5 in the 1960s through his early solo career. The budget reached $155-200 million — blockbuster scale for a biographical drama, reflecting the confidence the estate and Lionsgate have placed in the cultural moment. John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall) wrote the screenplay. The film premiered in Berlin on April 10 before its U.S. theatrical release next Friday.
The cast leans into the family dimension of the story: Nia Long as Katherine Jackson, Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson, Miles Teller as entertainment attorney John Branca, and Laura Harrier. At the center, Jaafar — who physically resembles his uncle in ways that are almost unsettling in the trailer footage — carries a film on which an enormous amount of cultural weight has been placed.
The Complications No One Is Ignoring
This film does not arrive without controversy, and acknowledging it is part of understanding what kind of cultural event it actually is. Paris Jackson — Michael's daughter — publicly criticized the casting of Miles Teller as Branca, arguing it risked the estate's assets and gave Branca a platform to "enrich and aggrandize himself." Early script drafts that addressed abuse allegations were removed, reportedly due to settlement terms with an accuser. The estate's fingerprints are on the production at every level.
These aren't peripheral footnotes. They're central to how the film will be received and debated in the week after it opens. The audience walking into theaters April 24 is not a naive one. The conversation about Michael Jackson's legacy has been ongoing since 2019's Leaving Neverland documentary, and this film arrives into that context whether it engages with it directly or not.
Why the Trailer Numbers Tell a Specific Story
116 million views in 24 hours says something about appetite — but it also says something about identity. Michael Jackson is a figure whose music, aesthetics, and movement vocabulary are embedded in popular culture across generations and continents. The posters for Michael are reportedly up from Tokyo to São Paulo. The global response to the trailer isn't just film marketing performing well. It's a world that built itself, in part, around this man's work, checking to see how the story will be told.
Fuqua making this film, Jaafar Jackson playing his uncle, the estate shaping the narrative — all of these choices are legible as a particular kind of storytelling: controlled, reverential, commercially maximized. That may frustrate viewers who want the harder conversation. It may satisfy millions who simply want to see the spectacle of that life rendered cinematically. Both responses are valid. Both will be present in the audience starting next Friday.
The record trailer numbers tell you this film will be seen. What gets argued about after — that's the cultural event that's actually happening.
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