While some exhaled “this is it??” after watching This Is It, the box office roundup reveals an exhilarating surprise: the Michael Jackson concert-film-cum-documentary-cum-commercial-feature movie This Is It raked in the top earnings at the weekend box office. It earned $21.3 million domestically and $101 million internationally.

The Jacko posthumous offering topped the sleeper sensation Paranormal Activity that raked in $16.5 million. This Is It’s strong pull at the weekend box office ‘prompted distributor Sony to extend its original 2-week run by 3 weeks.’ Tallies reveal that ‘the Sony release easily won both the domestic and foreign race,’ showing victory in both US domestic and foreign markets. Jacko, it seems, still rules the world.

The This Is It movie is described by its director, Kenny Ortega, also the choreographer of the ill-fated London concert series, as a ‘musical mosaic’ that features ‘wall-to-wall’ music. It was originally intended as a concert DVD. It includes edited footages of Michael Jackson rehearsing for the London concert series.

You see Michael onstage rehearsing many of the songs that would’ve appeared in the concert. But there’s no one there watching except for a handful of dancers. And 18,000 empty seats,” Ortega said.

Without having had any advance previews, the top grossing position of the This Is It movie only proves that Michael Jackson may, indeed, be more profitable dead than alive, as some people precisely predicted.

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Via Variety