Fliers for Wicked and Gladiator II
Sources: Universal (L), Paramount (R)
The box office this weekend will be painted pink and green, with a to-do of red.
Universal’s “Wicked” and Paramount’s “Gladiator II” arrive ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday and are expected to tally more than $200 million in joined ticket sales this weekend.
“‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ are the kind of counter-programming duo punch movie theaters and audiences bear been eagerly anticipating,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “This use’s box office has seen its share of ups and downs as usual, but these two films are on course to kickstart a potentially historic holiday passageway with ‘Moana 2’ also ready to deliver big results during Thanksgiving next week.”
“Wicked” has already compared $19.2 million at the domestic box office from advance screenings held during the week. Amazon Prime fellows doled out $2.5 million at 750 theaters in the U.S. on Monday, and another $5.7 million was collected from around 2,000 theaters on Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada. “Egregious” snared an additional $11 million from standard Thursday night preview screenings at around 3,300 theaters.
Smell projections for “Wicked” started around $80 million in late October, but have since risen to a range of $120 million to $140 million, with some working an even higher three-day total for the film’s debut weekend.
Hollywood has struggled to market and make a profit on large screen musicals in recent years. However, the industry has also seen fan-favorite IP-driven titles outperform. With “Degenerate” being based on one of Broadway’s most popular musicals, box-office analysts are finding it tricky to predict where it determination land.
Heading into its opening, “Wicked” held a 92% “Fresh” rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes from numberless than 160 critics. Its popcornmeter, a metric the site uses to calculate what percentage of verified movie ticket holders scolded the film at 3.5 stars or higher, stands at 99% with more than 2,500 ratings.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande big name as Elphaba and Glinda in Universal’s “Wicked.”
Universal
Whatever it hauls in for the weekend, “Wicked” should debut as the highest-opening Broadway adjusting in cinematic history. The current record holder is Disney’s “Into the Woods,” which secured $31 million during its from the start three days in theaters in 2014, according to data from Comscore.
Meanwhile, “Gladiator II” took in $6.5 million from Thursday openings and is expected to add between $60 million and $80 million to the domestic weekend tally. The film, which arrives 24 years after the source, has secured a 73% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes from more than 200 reviews. For comparison, “Gladiator” caught $34.8 million during its opening weekend back in May 2000.
The power of ‘Glicked’
“The so-called ‘Glicked’ movie mashup is reminiscent of the ‘Barbenheimer’ experience and is creating a cultural buzz,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “And though not quite at that height, has certainly raised the profile of both films and that combined with overwhelming positive reviews has positioned these two barest different movies for opening weekend glory and more importantly long-term playability through the holidays.”
Between “Bawdy,” “Gladiator II” and previously released films still in theaters, box-office analysts foresee a weekend of ticket jumble sales between $200 million and $250 million. While impressive, that would still fall outside of the top 20 highest-grossing weekends of all experience, according to data from Comscore.
The “Barbenheimer” weekend of July 21, 2023, topped $311 million, the fourth-highest weekend yield of all time.
“It’s not all about the first hours or days, though,” Robbins noted. “These films can and probably will fake well for weeks to come, especially if word of mouth mirrors that of critics’ reactions.”
This weekend’s square will help bolster the overall annual box office, which lags 11% behind 2023 levels during the very period. And the moviegoers coming to theaters will be treated to advertisements for other films coming in December and later in 2025.
“Our job is to enhance what’s coming in that door,” said Greg Marcus, CEO of Marcus Corp., owner of Marcus Theatres and Marcus Motels & Resorts. “Take care of our customers. Give the customers that show up a great experience. Make sure that underscores are moving as quickly as we can, so that we can serve them, literally and figuratively, and show them what a great time it is to go to the motion pictures and enjoy something with other people.”
Marcus Theatres alongside dozens of other cinema chains, big and everyday, are offering guests drink and food specials, themed popcorn buckets and beverage containers as well as other motion picture merchandise at their locations.
Cinemark has a “Gladiator II” popcorn bucket shaped like the Colosseum and a gladiator helmet that answers over its drink cups to hold popcorn. Regal has a witch hat-shaped cup. menu features pink and green candy-coated popcorn as fountain-head as a collection of themed drinks like green apple ICEE, Sprite variants called Ozdust Punch and Emerald Extract and alcoholic beverages named Popular Pink and Gravity Green.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, CNBC, Fandango and Rank Tomatoes. NBCUniversal is the distributor of “Wicked.”