Two heavyweight films strode into the Cineplex this weekend: Gladiator II and Wicked: Part 1. And some wondered whether “Glicked,” or “Wickiator,” or whatever you want to call it, might meet with the same success as Barbenheimer (a mashup of Barbie and Oppenheimer) saw last year.
Well, the box-office returns haven’t been quite that great. But still, both Wicked and Gladiator II conducted themselves just fine.
Domestically, Wicked flew to a most magical debut. It earned a staggering $114 million in North America, according to early estimates—the biggest opening ever for a Broadway adaptation, and the highest opening for a non-sequel in 2024. It’s already the year’s 15th highest-grossing film—and it’s been in theaters just a little more than three days. Much like its protagonist, Wicked is painted green.
Gladiator II wasn’t nearly the stateside powerhouse that Wicked was this weekend. Indeed, the swords-and-sandals sequel earned less than half of what the record-setting musical did domestically: $55.5 million.
Still, that’s hardly a slow start. And when you eye the worldwide box office, Gladiator II was the cinematic champ: Add in the $165.5 million it earned overseas, and Gladiator II’s global box office stands at a very healthy $221 million. Wicked, by comparison, earned just about $50.2 million internationally, pushing its worldwide weekend total to $164.2 million.
Red One, last weekend’s champ, managed to hold on to third place, gathering up another $13.3 million. That pushes the holiday film’s total to $52.9 million—which, given its $250 million price tag, keeps Red One appropriately in the red.
Angel Studios’ latest faith-based work—Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.—took fourth place with $5.1 million. That pushed it just a tooth ahead of Venom: The Last Dance, which finished fifth with $4 million. The Last Dance has now earned $133.8 million domestically overall, and $456.4 million worldwide.
3 Responses
I’m impressed that we had a repeat of “two movies open on the same weekend, one makes $100M domestic and the other makes $50M domestic” so soon after Barbenheimer — the first time that had ever happened, if I’m not mistaken. (Polygon, “Barbie and Oppenheimer’s box office weekends were both massive winners”) I wasn’t sure if I’d see that split success again for years, let alone less than a year and a half later.
I saw Wicked on Broadway many years ago, and I was impressed at how well it translated to film. Good cast, good music and singing, appropriately over-the-top set design, and those flying monkeys are just as creepy in CGI. A bit long, but I was too entertained to complain. Family-friendly too.
Hearing people talk about the ‘family-friendly’ nature of the musical and thus the movie always caught me off-guard in a good way, since I read the novel first (good book but very adult and very sesquipedalian) and never saw the musical but heard very different things about it compared to the adults-only content of the book.