Chiller! Expect Biopic Avalanche As ‘Michael’ Blitzes All-Time Box Office Records

As the Michael Jackson biopic dominates at the box office, a flood gate of musical biographical features are on the way.

Over 20 music biopics are set to hit cinemas over the next few years. Some were announced years back but haven’t been updated.

But all that has changed since the Michael Jackson big-screener Michael has become the first biopic to cross the US$1 billion (AU$930.7 million) at the global box office.

It is the second film to vault over $1 billion in 2026, after Universal‘s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Last month, Michael overtook 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody (gross: $911 million) to become the highest-grossing music biopic of all time. A few weeks later it shot past Oppenheimer‘s $975.8 million to be the highest-grossing biopic of any kind.

Michael’s producer Graham King, who also produced Bohemian Rhapsody, remarked: “It’s been truly heart warming to see people from all over the world, young and old, from all walks of life come together to experience this film and the joy that it’s brought to audiences everywhere.”

In Australia it took $9.3 million the first weekend, and was up to $32.56 million a few weeks later.

It’s not just Michael’s box office success The brand is generating mega-revenue elsewhere.

This year, Jackson records sold an extra 2.5 million worldwide and expected to hit 5 million by the end of the year. Numerous albums went back into the US charts where in July, his 1982 album Thriller celebrated its 726th week.

Numerous albums and singles returned to the ARIA charts after the movie’s opening.

This week, ARIA reported the late icon stayed again on the #1 spot on the On Replay Singles Chart with Thriller and on the singles chart with Billie Jean.

Catalogue streams pole-vaulted 95% on the opening weekend while monthly listeners on Spotify went from 68 million pre-Michael to a record 105 million. Jackson memorabilia is selling strongly, but no specific data is available.

The movie and stage productions like MJ The Musical helped push the estate to the value of $3.5 billion. The musical sold more than 7 million tickets worldwide (with the Australian run hitting by 875,000) to a total gross of $344 million.

Sequel

So it's no surprise that Michael 2 has already been green-lighted. It starts shooting later this year or early 2027, with a due date by 2029.

It will focus on the creation of the Dangerous and HIStory world tours and problematic personal life including the legal issues.

This month saw updates of the Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg, and Fred Astaire movies.

Spears’ The Woman In Me, based on her 2023 memoirs of the same name which sold a million copies in its first week, has just added Liz Meriwether as the scriptwriter.

Meriwether created New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel and co-created Dying For Sex. It will be through Universal, produced by Marc Platt.

Director Jon M. Chu’s most recent project was Wicked. His comment about the Spears book – “she did what she had to do to survive” – is expected to be the movie’s hook.

Universal confirmed that Snoop will be dogging it in the cinemas by August 2027. Playing the rapper is Jonathan Daviss (Outer Banks) while behind the cameras is Craig Brewer of Song Sung Blue and Hustle & Flow fame.

The project around dancer, singer and actor Fred Astaire was first spruiked five years ago by Sony and producer Amy Pascal. But it’s back on the moving sidewalk.

Tom Holland, not content with the time pressure of making and promoting the blockbusters, The Odyssey and Spider Man: Brand New Day, has revealed he’s already started rehearsals for it.

He told TV’s Good Morning America he’s doing all the dance routines. Of rehearsals so far, he admitted, “It both filled me with excitement and absolute dread because I’ve got so much work to do to try and do Fred proud.”

Holland started his acting career on the London stage, in the title role in Billy Elliot The Musical on the West End from 2008 to 2010.

10 Others On The Way

Anthony Kiedis

In 2024 Universal Pictures put in motion an adaption of Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis’ 2004 best selling memoirs Scar Tissue. They promised “a shockingly candid portrait of an artist, addict and ringleader.”

At 12, Kiedis left the strict Midwestern life with his mother and moved to Los Angeles to be with his father. Dad was an actor-turned-drug dealer to the stars who introduced the boy to drugs (and a life of addictions) and LA’s bohemian lifestyles. He once had Cher as a baby sitter.

The story includes meeting at school RHCP’s original guitarist Hillel Slovak who became a soul mate and “the only person I could talk to”.

The anguish of losing Slovak to drugs was poured into the band’s songs, as was a life-changing meeting with Australian-born bassist Flea. In between, there were stories of Kiedis going MIA for days, accusations of raping a 14-year-old, writing poetry, and selling 120 million records.

Kiedis noted that Scar Tissue sold well in prisons, schools, and hospitals. Hopefully its themes of hitting rock bottom and bouncing back makes it to the movie.

The frontman is producing it with the band’s long time manager Guy Oseary and producer Brian Grazer whose credits include A Beautiful Mind, 8 Mile, Apollo 13, Arrested Development, and American Gangster.

Joni Mitchell

Legendary Canadian troubadour Joni Mitchell has been rediscovered of late, for her poetry and paintings, fusion of jazz and pop and, introducing a female vocabulary on albums as Court & Spark and Blue. Meryl Streep will play the lead.

Boyz II Men

Boyz II Men are taking their time getting the script right. “We want to make sure the story’s told the right way,” they said on radio. “A lot of things have been said about us to score points off us because we’re not affiliated with a gang.”

KISS

Should KISS have gotten together in New York City or Tokyo? There are some zany stories on their 1973 formation. At their first rehearsal, guitarist Ace Frehley, who replied to an ad in a music magazine, was told by Gene Simmons, “I’m gonna knock your head off!”

Gene and Paul Stanley were not impressed that while they were still in conversation with another prospective, Frehley walked in – one orange sneaker and one red sneaker – plugged in and wailed away. The pair were prepared to toss him out, until Ace pulled off a solo on Deuce that stopped them in their tracks.

The early days were about how they devised their cartoon characters and played their first show in a club to just a handful of people. Ten years down the track, they were playing to 137,000 at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Director McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol) is known for action thriller blockbusters such as Charlie's Angels and Terminator Salvation. The movie has Simmons and Stanley’s blessings. Nick Jonas plays Stanley.

Cass Elliot

Cass Elliot is another 1960s figure who’s been rediscovered of late. Born Ellen Naomi Cohen, she was the most charismatic member of high flying folk rock group The Mamas & The Papas (California Dreamin’, Monday Monday) before a solo career that included her own TV show, cabaret shows, and the hits Dream A Little Dream Of Me and Make Your Own Kind Of Music, which was recently a TikTok hit.

Cass’ legacy remains, with stage productions around the world on her life and music. Shannon Lee portrayed her in the 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and by Rachel Redleaf in the 2019 film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

The biopic is based on My Mama Cass, written in 2024 by her daughter Owen Elliot-Kugell, who was seven when she died in 1974 in London. Baby Reindeer star Jessica Gunning plays lead.

It is scripted by novelist Emma Forrest based on a daughter’s discovery of her mother, and produced by Veritas Entertainment, which did the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

The movie will look at the circumstances of her death, wrongly attributed to her choking on a ham sandwich. This was due to a half eaten sandwich found next to her bed.

The reality was that Cass had returned home exhausted after a hectic round of social engagements (including a film premiere and Mick Jagger’s birthday) and died of a heart attack. Her heart was weakened by a combination of weight issues, crash dieting, and substance abuse.

Elliot-Kugell remains angry that her mother’s death was associated with a joke. But in 2020, a Hollywood Reporter writer claimed she was asked to write about the sandwich story by Cass’ manager, to divert the story in case drugs were involved. A coroner found no traces.

She died in Flat #12 at 9 Curzon Place (now Curzon Square) in posh Mayfair, owned by US singer songwriter Harry Nilsson. Four years later, The Who drummer Keith Moon died there. Both were 32.

Josephine Baker

Singer and actress FKA twigs plays the iconic and ground-breaking African American singer, dancer, and revue leader Josephine Baker, which goes into production in the next few months.

“Her extraordinary legacy is such an inspiration to me and to so many people around the world,” twigs said.

Still untitled, it is directed and co-written by award winning French film maker Maïmouna Doucouré.

Baker was born in 1905 into a poor family in St Louis. Fed up with the racism she encountered trying to break into the American vaudeville circuit, she moved to Paris in 1925 where she became an instant sensation for her daring routines and outrageous fashions.

High in society in Paris and other European cities bought up everything to do with her, from fashion dolls to skin cream.

When the Nazis invaded Paris in the 1940s, she turned her home into a haven for Jewish and other refugees. She joined the French Resistance, using her tour schedule to carry secrets across borders.

Until her death in France in 1975, she was an outspoken civil rights and social justice advocate, and lent her name to the American civil rights movement.

The Beatles

Movies about The Beatles are literally in their hundreds, so film makers are forced to come up with more out-of-the-blue hooks like Yesterday where a musician wakes up in an alternate reality where no one remembers The Beatles.

Sam Mendes’ idea of four movies from the perspective of each of the Fabs scripted by three writers was a bigger project than he expected, and he’s apparently regretting committing The Beatles: A Four Film Cinematic Event to an April 2028 release date.

Ozzy Osbourne

Plans for the biopic on the old bat eater began five years ago, but sprang into motion after his death last year. Son Jack Osbourne is on record to say a “phenomenal” actor has been locked in.

The script by Lee Hall is finished. He brought a touch of surrealism to Elton John’s Rocketman. The narrative is hooked around the ‘80s solo days and his life-saving marriage to Sharon.

Robert Johnson

The 1930s master of the Delta blues inspired the likes of Led Zeppelin, BB King, Eric Clapton, and The Rolling Stones with gems such as Crossroads and Love In Vain.

But the real draw of the movie would be the myths that he made a deal with the Devil to be a success, and whether the heavily womaniser’s early death at 27 came from syphilis or being poisoned by a jealous husband.

Roy Orbison

There were enough tragedies in Roy Orbison’s to have the makings of not one, but five, country songs.

His first wife Claudette died in his arms at 25 after a motorbike accident. A few years later, when away touring England, the family home in Tennessee, caught on fire, killing two of his three young sons.

The British Invasion saw the self-styled The Big O and his ballads decline. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack on December 6, 1988, aged 52, reportedly after a screaming row with a family member.

The Orbison family is working with Columbia and Compelling Pictures (the latter was behind Bohemian Rhapsody) on two projects recounting his life.

You Got It focussed on his marriage to German teenager Barbara Jakobs in 1969. They met at a time his life was at its lowest ebb. She became his manager and in the 1980s helped steer his career revival, when films and TV rediscovered his classics as Oh Pretty Woman, Blue Bayou, Only The Lonely, and Dream Baby.

He also hit the charts as a member of the supergroup Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne.

The second Orbison project is a long-form documentary on his life and musical journey.

Here Are Some More

Female Cultural Icons:

Janis Joplin, Gloria Estefan, Dionne Warwick, Queen Latifah, Ronnie Spector, Sinéad O’Connor, Linda Ronstadt, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Ground Breakers:

George Clinton, Otis Redding, BB King, Buddy Holly, Buddy Guy, Keith Moon, Syd Barrett, Randy Travis, and Ronnie Milsap.

Bands:

Bon Jovi, Heart, The Replacements, Air Supply, and The Scorpions.

Madonna told Interview Magazine she has pulled her biopic because Universal wouldn’t assign it the big budget she felt her story needed to be told properly.

La Ciccone offered to shoot in Serbia but the studio dismissed it, saying she wouldn't stay there for three or four days.

She tried to move the project to Netflix but it led to a stand-off with Universal which said she couldn’t use her own songs unless she bought it back from them for an “exorbitant price.”

Julia Garner, who put in work in a singer bootcamp to play her, has dropped out of the project.

Martin Scorsese’s depiction of Frank Sinatra is delayed, although Leonardo DiCaprio confirms he’s still committed, as is Jennifer Lawrence who plays Sinatra’s second wife, actress Ava Gardner.

Scorsese has delayed a number of projects due to scheduling issues, including a movie on Jesus. He also has issues with Sinatra’s family, who owns the rights to his likeness, about inclusion of unsavoury parts of his private life.