When the teaser trailer for Michael, the long-awaited Lionsgate biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua, landed online Nov. 6, 2025, it pulled in 116.2 million views within 24 hours.
That figure made it the most-viewed trailer in the history of music biopics, surpassing the previous record holder, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, with 96.1 million views. The world stopped, watched, and felt something. At least that’s what it felt like to me.
With Michael opening in theaters April 24, it is exactly the right moment to say plainly what the numbers have always confirmed. No artist in the modern era has built what Jackson established.
Consider what Jackson achieved before the age of 30. Thriller, released Nov. 29, 1982, remains the best-selling album of all time globally, with an estimated 70 million copies sold worldwide, according to Guinness World Records. It spent a record 37 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, generated seven top-10 singles and won eight Grammy Awards, more than any album in history at the time. The RIAA has certified it 34 times platinum in the United States alone.
In March 1983, Billie Jean became the first video by a Black artist to enter heavy rotation on MTV, breaking the network’s long-standing, systemic exclusion of artists of color.
Following the release of Thriller in late 1982, MTV initially refused to air the video, arguing that it did not fit their “rock”-centered, white-dominated format. Walter Yetnikoff, then-president of CBS Records, intervened and famously threatened to pull all CBS artists, including major acts like Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, from the network and go public with accusations of racism against MTV.
Growing up, my father filled our house with James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and the full Motown catalog. He was deliberate about it, as if he knew we needed to understand the roots before we could appreciate Michael’s impact. What we did not realize until later was that those same artists shaped Michael Jackson himself.
We had the CDs. We gathered around the VHS player and popped in the Smooth Criminal movie, crowding each other out just to get a clear view of the screen. We mimicked every move he made when he appeared on television. Moonwalk attempts in the living room. My brother, with complete sincerity, called Michael Jackson his godfather. Delusional? Maybe. But none of us argued with him. We understood exactly what he meant. How many artists do you know who have people who imitate them for a living? People who’ve gone through extensive surgery to look like Michael Jackson?
The Michael biopic, starring Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson and featuring Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson, Nia Long as Katherine Jackson, and Miles Teller as attorney John Branca, arrives with the full weight of that history on its back. Fuqua, the director of Training Day and The Equalizer, has said he was drawn to the project because Jackson refused to be boxed in, a quality that shaped Fuqua’s own ambitions as a young director cutting his teeth in Black music culture.
I remember exactly where I was when Michael died in 2009. I remember how quiet everything went at first, an eerie, disbelieving silence, before people began breaking down in tears, openly, the way you grieve someone you actually knew. That reaction made sense to those of us who grew up with him. He created the soundtracks to our lives.
That legacy is specifically and profoundly Black. Jackson’s influence runs through Usher, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, and virtually every major pop act of the past four decades. The King of Pop has generated an estimated $3.5 billion in posthumous earnings, establishing him as one of the highest-earning artists in history, both dead and alive, thanks to his influence, timeless music, and massive fanbase.
The sales records, the visual innovation, the choreography, his humility, the cross-cultural reach, the dismantling of racial barriers, and the enduring emotional connection that still drives millions of people to press play on a trailer for a man who is no longer with us.
I can’t wait to watch this the same way I watched the 1992 mini-series The Jacksons: An American Dream. No matter what critics say, this will go double platinum in my house.
