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EXCLUSIVE: A lotta people around the world watched the official trailer for Paramount‘s Gladiator II in its first 24 hours after dropping Tuesday. So much so that it outstripped the debut trailer traffic of the studio’s own Top Gun: Maverick. You’ll remember Top Gun: Maverick posted a three-day U.S. box office opening of $126.7 million.
The Ridley Scott-directed sequel to 2000’s Gladiator was viewed by 128 million around the world across social platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and X in its first 24 hours. Top Gun: Maverick generated 75 million views during the same time span.
In the U.S., the Gladiator II reached a peak trend of No. 1 on X and ranked No. 2 on Google’s U.S. Daily Search Trend list at the 24-hour mark. Today, the trailer continues to trend on YouTube, two days after its launch.
Current views for the trailer for Gladiator II, which opens in theaters on Friday, November 22, are at 180M, with the 48-hour traffic standing at 177M views.
Last week, Universal moved its big femme event movie Wicked, based on the Broadway musical, to the same release date as Gladiator II. While this was done so that Wicked could get a leg-up before Disney’s Moana II opens on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, many are buzzing that a Barbenheimer weekend between the male-demo Gladiator II and female-skewing Wicked could be brewing. The hope for both Paramount and Universal is that both male and female moviegoers will find themselves at both movies over that weekend.
Gladiator II‘s star Paul Mescal told EW about the potential box office bonanza weekend, “Wickdiator doesn’t really roll off the tongue does it? I think my preference would probably be Glicked if it has a similar effect to what it did for Barbie and Oppenheimer.”
Barbie opened to $162M, while Oppenheimer opened to $82.4M. The original Gladiator opened to $34.8M during the first weekend of May 2000, legged out to $187.7M domestic and $465.3M global, and won five Oscars including Best Picture.
Gladiator II blurb: Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.
Pedro Pascal stars as Marcus Acacius, Joseph Quinn as Emperor Geta, Fred Hechinger as Emperor Caracalla, Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, and Denzel Washington as Macrinus.