The Michael Jackson Fan Club

(1-11-09) "Michael Jackson's This Is It" has pulled in $101 million worldwide in its first five days, and distributor Sony says it is extending the farewell performance film beyond its planned two-week run.

The film was the No. 1 Halloween flick domestically with a $21.3 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

"This Is It" raised its domestic total to $32.5 million. The movie raked in $68.5 million overseas, including $10.4 million in Japan, $6.3 million in Germany, $5.8 million in France and $3.2 million in China. In Great Britain, where Jackson had planned a marathon series of 50 London concerts starting last July, the movie earned $7.6 million.

Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony said,

"He's just loved everywhere on the planet. It doesn't matter if it's Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, South America. Every continent in the world loved him and his music."

Originally scheduled for a theatrical run of only two weeks, the studio has extended it a few more weeks domestically, leaving it in theaters through Thanksgiving weekend, one of the year's busiest moviegoing times.

Sony plans to extend the run of "This Is It" overseas on a country-by-country basis, with most territories probably getting one to three weeks of extra playing time, Bruer said.

The studio paid $60 million for film rights to Jackson's rehearsal footage, an investment the movie recouped in days.

"They bet $60 million on this and got $101 million in just five days," says Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "It was a gamble and a bet that paid off."

The movie fell a bit short of last year's $31.1 million opening weekend domestically for "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert." But Bruer says "This Is It" has a real good shot at surpassing the $65.3 million domestic total during the entire run of Cyrus' movie, which tops the all-time charts for music documentaries.

Worldwide, "This Is It" has already shot past Cyrus' concert film. Cyrus mainly appeals to American teenaged girls, and her movie got only a limited release overseas, where it took in about $5 million to give the film a global total of just over $70 million.

"This Is It" played in 3,481 theaters domestically, about five times the number for Cyrus' movie. Also, "Best of Both Worlds" ran in 3-D, for which theaters typically charge a few dollars more.

And Cyrus' young fans are an audience segment that tends to rush out to see movies over opening weekend, the movie doing nearly half its business in the first few days. Sony hopes for a longer shelf life for "This Is It," which drew older crowds that tend to catch movies on their own schedule, with less regard for the opening-weekend frenzy. According to Sony,  fans older than 25 accounted for 62 percent of the audience.

Source: MJFC / AP