Michael is now earning 61% of its worldwide box office overseas, and that single number reframes the entire argument about where DC went wrong under James Gunn.
The Michael Jackson biopic has climbed to $937.6 million worldwide, powered by $572.4 million internationally against $365.2 million domestic.
A few weeks ago that foreign share sat at 59.3%. It’s rising as the film closes on a billion dollars, the opposite of the usual pattern, where movies lean harder on domestic as they age. Michael is doing the reverse. The world is carrying it, and it’s carrying it harder every week.
That’s the exact point my insiders have been making about Zack Snyder’s DC for months, and one Puck News recently backed up too.
The 61% Sits Right Inside Snyder’s Range
Look at where that number lands.
Batman v Superman earned 62.2% of its box office overseas. Man of Steel did 56.6%. Michael at 61% is sitting directly inside that Snyder band — the mythic, larger-than-life, global-icon band.
And those Snyder figures don’t even account for inflation. Adjusted, they’re higher still.
It’s not a coincidence. Michael Jackson crossed borders, languages, and cultures. He was a worldwide figure, not just an American one.
Snyder built his Superman, Batman, and Justice League with that same scale — gods walking the earth, designed to play in every market on the planet. When you make something that size, the world shows up.
James Gunn Blamed The Character. My Insiders Blamed The Approach.
This is where it turns damning for Gunn and his current regime.
When Superman stalled overseas, Gunn didn’t point at the filmmaking. He pointed at the character. He told Rolling Stone that Superman is “not a known commodity in some places” — that the Man of Steel just isn’t a big, recognized hero in much of the world the way Batman is.
He also reached for anti-American sentiment abroad as a reason.
My insiders said the exact opposite, and they said it by name.
They put Superman in the same class as Michael Jackson and Elvis: a larger-than-life figure the entire planet already knows. Not a character the world is unaware of. A character the world has known for almost ninety years.
The numbers side with my insiders, not Gunn.
The character was never the problem
Gunn’s Superman managed just $264.5 million internationally, a weak 42.7% of its worldwide total. Snyder took the same character far higher: Man of Steel did $379.1 million overseas (56.6%), and Batman v Superman did $544 million (62.2%). Same Superman. Same global markets. A completely different outcome.
So the character was never the problem.
As we laid out on Man of Steel‘s 13th anniversary, that same “not-so-globally-known” Superman pulled nearly double Gunn’s overseas haul under Snyder. The character wasn’t the ceiling; the version Gunn made was. Smaller, softer, more quirky than mythic, and the world didn’t turn up for it.
Then look at what’s sitting at 61% international right now: a movie about Michael Jackson. An actual global icon.
The exact name my insiders used. While Gunn argued Superman isn’t iconic enough to travel, a film built on precisely the kind of icon they said Superman is is closing on a billion dollars off the back of the rest of the world.
The Global Argument Is Now Impossible To Ignore
Here’s the part I’ve been reporting that the trades are only circling.
I’ve been told Gunn is out once Paramount closes its WBD takeover, with a full DC reset to follow, and my latest is that the exit lands before Man of Tomorrow, with a Zack Snyder return in active play.
And it’s not a vague return. My insiders describe Snyder as “gung-ho” on both a Dark Knight Returns movie and a Justice League finale — Saudi-backed, mapped out, and built to take on Marvel.
Large-scale, mythic, event storytelling. Which is exactly the gear that travels overseas. Just like Michael.
And the corroboration keeps stacking up. John Campea backed the Gunn exit. Deadline openly questioned whether Gunn will even still be there. And Puck has lined up behind the SnyderVerse-return reporting, the same outlet now echoing the global-box-office point my insiders made first.
Kevin Smith backed us up, too.
DCU co-head Peter Safran also recently confirmed our Super Family info.
Global icons sell globally
The 61% isn’t an opinion. It’s the business case sitting underneath all of it. Global icons sell globally.
Snyder built DC that way, and the overseas numbers proved it — Justice League is still dominating Netflix, and Snyder’s Superman is still exploding overseas years later.
That’s what a Paramount-owned DC will be reading: a global character, treated at global scale, with a worldwide audience the current regime left on the table.
Gunn blamed the character. Michael is closing on a billion dollars, proving the character was never the problem.
Snyder’s DC already had it. It might be about to have it again. Cue “Hallelujah.”
