King of Pop may soon be considered king of music film
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Published: October 30, 2009
LOS ANGELES — The 50 comeback concerts Michael Jackson planned in London last summer sold out in a few hours.
With those shows relegated to what-if status by his death in June, the question now is how well the singer can pack movie theaters with "Michael Jackson: This Is It,” a chronicle of his concert preparations that now stands as his final performance. Advance ticket sales have been brisk, but no one has a handle on how big the turnout might be this week. According to studio estimates, late-night Tuesday screenings of "Michael Jackson’s This Is It” earned $2.2 million at the North America box office. Distributor Sony calls those results "unprecedented” for a Tuesday in October. Some think the film is likely to surpass the $31.1 million opening weekend and the $65.3 million lifetime haul of "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert,” the biggest concert movie on record. Some expect a $100 million total domestic haul. Others think it could go much higher, but how high is anyone’s guess. Not quite a concert film, not quite a documentary, "This Is It” is like nothing that has hit theaters before. It comes just months after Jackson’s death, with fans still eagerly digesting every scrap of news about him. It distills more than 100 hours of footage shot as Jackson rehearsed for the concerts in the weeks before his death. And it truly is a final glimpse of an artist who ruled the pop charts in the 1980s before retreating to a reclusive life amid allegations of child molestation. The Associated Press
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