'Michael' moonwalks to top of Korean box office

The king of pop has the world dancing again — and Koreans seem ready to join in the fun.

"Michael," the Antoine Fuqua-directed Michael Jackson biopic, topped the box office over the weekend, drawing about 470,000 moviegoers and accounting for 51 percent of total ticket sales revenue, according to the state-run Korean Film Council's box office tracker.

The film drew 99,903 admissions on opening day and added another 59,050 on Thursday, bringing its two-day total to 177,543.

"Michael" had sold over 140,000 advance tickets and sits at the top of the pre-sales chart.

Distributed locally by Universal Pictures, "Michael" stars the late singer's real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson in the title role. The film traces Michael's path from his Indiana childhood with the Jackson 5 in 1966 to the "Bad" world tour stop at Wembley Stadium in 1988, where he cemented his place as the king of pop.

The film makes no mention of the child sexual abuse allegations that trailed Jackson from 1993 until he died in 2009 — those segments were scrapped late in production after a clause was discovered in a settlement with one of Jackson's accusers, Jordan Chandler, that barred him from appearing on screen.

"Michael" has pulled in $253.5 million in North America since opening April 24 and $339.1 million internationally, for a $592.6 million global haul.

The reviews have told two very different stories, though. Critics largely dismissed the film as a sanitized highlight reel, leaving it at a measly 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences ate it up, handing it a 97 percent audience score on the same site and an A- on CinemaScore.

Reception in Korea has been generally favorable across the board. "Michael" holds a 3.2 out of 5 user rating on local aggregator Watcha Pedia, with critics' scores tracking similarly at 5s and 6s out of 10.

There's reason to believe "Michael" has room to run. The film is produced by Graham King, whose previous music biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" (2018) drew 9.94 million admissions in Korea — just shy of the 10 million benchmark that defines megahit status here, and still the country's all-time top-grossing music film.

The Queen biopic was a singular phenomenon in Korea. Fans came back for repeat viewings, with sing-along screenings selling out at theaters across the country. Queen songs climbed back onto local charts decades after they first dropped, while social media filled up with cosplay shots and Freddie Mercury impersonations.