The June box office began last weekend with the arrival of a record-breaking horror movie. Everyone can’t stop talking about A24’s Backrooms, and the hugely impressive breakout for YouTube star-turned director Kane Parsons. At just 20-years-old, Parsons is now the youngest director to hold the #1 spot at the North American box office, as Backrooms flew to a $118 million global haul. This total was also enough to break another record, with Backrooms delivering the biggest start in box office history for an original horror movie.
So Backrooms is the movie on everyone’s lips, closely followed by another horror in Obsession. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the theatrical line-up is suddenly irrelevant. Sure, the likes of The Mandalorian and Grogu and the video game sequel Mortal Kombat II are failing to live up to expectations, but other May releases are still holding strong. Among them is Antoine Fuqua’s musical biopic, Michael, which examines the early career of the iconic King of Pop with all the glitz and glamour he would’ve expected.
As Parsons’ feature debut burst onto the global scene, Fuqua’s biopic continued its strong run, earning another $11.8 million domestically and finishing fourth in the U.S. ranks on its sixth weekend. This 42% drop is the second-largest week-to-week for the film so far, but still represents a strong hold against viral new competition. At the time of writing, Michael now sits on a huge $854 million worldwide, with its staying power at the box office indicative of a film that is ready to become one of the 100 highest-grossing movies of all time next weekend. To do so, Michael just has to earn another $2 million to overtake the current 100th-placed Venom, the 2018 sci-fi hit starring Tom Hardy.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
Parasite
Everything Everywhere
Oppenheimer
Birdman
No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Could We Get a ‘Michael’ Sequel?
Considering the film is about to enter an elite box office list, many would expect a Michael sequel to be inevitable. Late last month, that update finally arrived, with Lionsgate film chief, Adam Fogelson, confirming that a sequel was officially in development. “We are really excited about the progress we’re making with respect to a second ‘Michael’ film,” Fogelson said, adding, “All the conversations that we’ve been having with all of the appropriate parties continue to go exceptionally well.” Many complaints were made about how the first film avoided the more contentious side of Jackson’s life, with it expected that the sequel would need to dedicate at least some time to these controversies.
Michael is currently available to watch in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more movie news.
