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Universal’s female Jurassic World movie if you will, the feature take of Broadway musical Wicked, is expected to pull in any every single woman to the tune of a $125M-$150M domestic opening. Add in an extra $40M-$50M from overseas.
By every single woman, we mean stateside, in which pre-sales are through the roof. We’re hearing from sources that Wicked advance ticket sales are around $30M+. The movie is already holding previews: last night and Wednesday in premium theaters through an Amazon promotion with full-on previews starting Thursday at 2PM. That early screening business was strong enough to land Wicked a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Meanwhile, Paramount’s Gladiator 2 touches stateside with a $60M+ opening forecast, which will be the biggest start for an R-rated movie in November, best ever for filmmaker Ridley Scott and star Denzel Washington. The ancient Rome sequel crossed the century mark at the overseas box office today after an $87M weekend.
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Meanwhile Wicked will earn the best box office openings for director Jon M. Chu, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
Glicked is about to take effect at the box office. If anything, with Moana 2 coming on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the holiday stretch from Friday through the Sunday after Black Friday is expected to be the highest grossing ever at the domestic box office for all films.
“There’s a little bit of a Barbie moment going on with Wicked in terms of pre-sales,” commented one industry insider this morning. “They just keep going up and up with tracking numbers through the roof.”
What we’ve seen with these movies like Barbie and It Ends With Us, is that we know women are planning to had out to the cinemas for the weekend stateside, but then they just mob the theater. Don’t be shocked if there’s repeat viewership this weekend for Wicked.
Here in the states, Wicked will have more PLFs while Gladiator 2 will have more Imax. Wicked is booked at 3,800 theaters, while Gladiator 2 is booked at 3,500. Gladiator 2 isn’t all male: There are some women who will want to go watch Washington. As one tracking authority told us about both titles’ crossover audiences: Wicked will pull in less men, while Gladiator 2 will pull in more women.
The only preview shows that Gladiator 2 has held stateside before its 5PM Thursday previews is a “Screen Unseen” sneak of the movie in 200 locations.
Wicked will hit 61 overseas markets this weekend, beginning notably with Korea on Wednesday, followed by Australia, Brazil, Italy and Mexico on Thursday, and with Spain and the UK joining on Friday. This will represent 65% of the offshore footprint — such majors easing on down the Yellow Brick Road later include France on December 4, China on December 6, Germany on December 12 and Japan on March 7, 2025.
While Universal has been building Wicked awareness with a strong global campaign with spots during the Super Bowl and Summer Olympics, this is a property that doesn’t come with built-in awareness in certain areas of the globe.
If we look at comps, Wonka opened to $45.7M in like-for-like markets at today’s rates – though it debuted into a holiday frame and generally is better known IP given previous iterations of the Roald Dahl source material. Another musical, The Greatest Showman, did $18.5M at open back in 2018, then saw terrific leg-out. The hope with Wicked, which, as noted above, still has significant hubs to come, is that it also sees play-through.
The top performers this session are expected to be a mix of the UK, Australia, and possibly Korea whose audiences lean into musicals.
In terms of the sophomore session of Paramount’s Gladiator II, there may indeed be a battle for No. 1 with Wicked at the international box office. Gladiator II is adding China this frame and could see a pendulum swing with older audiences coming out for the second weekend. Essentially, which film ends up tops overseas will vary market-by-market. But, as much as some chatter wants to make this the next Barbeheimer, that doesn’t seem on the cards. The hope, we understand, in regards to the sequel’s second weekend overseas take is a -50% ease off its $87M foreign start or $43.5M.
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