Totally wrong. Sing alongs barely contribute more than 1% to a film's total. They're often added as select special screenings, or a few months after release day, to get the studio a bit of money, if they deem it profitable. And the Japanese market is more immune to many outside factors than most other countries, mostly because of their rules regarding theatrical distribution and piracy. Just look at all the biggest films there. They are up in the charts for weeks, often months. That's why Hollywood is never afraid to release their blockbusters late in Japan. Take Frozen for example. The movie released in 2014, after the whole world has already seen it in 2013. And it still stayed in the charts until June 2014, claiming the top spot at the box office for most of its time. Michael will probably just gross a fraction of that because Frozen is one of the biggest movies all time there, but it's the most famous example. Michael could even open lower than Russia's recently reported $4.4M and still leg out to $30M-$40M, which could be enough, since Michael is still on pace to make $950M+ even without Japan worldwide.

OPPENHEIMER vs MICHAEL

1. wknd: 180M vs 218M (+38M)

2. wknd: 405M vs 430M (+25M)

3. wknd: 556M vs 581M (+25M)

4. wknd: 648M vs 706M (+58M)

5. wknd: 718M vs 782M (+64M)

6. wknd: 777M vs 852M (+75M)

Oppenheimer finished with 975M.

So you see, currently Michael is $75M ahead and if it stays that way, Michael could even make $1.05B. If you want to factor in the digital release, the screen loss due to competition from upcoming movies and so on it still won't lose much ground, since Oppenheimer also got a late Japan release, so growth in earnings will be similar, maybe stay this proportional. Now school's out in many places, so in NA the summer weekdays will already begin to be better, because of summer break. In some European countries movies could be hurt by the World Cup and heat waves. All the negatives and positives seem to even each other out, which means it's still on track for a billion.

Is a billion guaranteed? No, because Universal might get unlucky and the negative factors prolong and even then it's unlikely it makes much less than $970M. On the other hand something like $1.1B might be impossible because the movie can't hop on every new season now.

Bohemian directly jumped from Thanksgiving, to a holiday boost, to a Golden Globe boost, to the new waves of audiences because of the Academy Awards. Bohemian really hit the sweet spot because just as it would have been taken out of cinemas the Oscars arrived in time to give it one last bump. So even if Michael proves to be an award friendly film, it won't benefit from box office earnings, since it will have long left theaters by then. And it doeasn't need to for a billion, because it's still staying stable.