After a viral press tour and overwhelmingly positive reviews, Wicked is finally here – and the early box office numbers are already starting to defy gravity.
2024 has been a bumpy year for musicals. Joker 2 – the pseudo musical for DC’s Gotham supervillain – was considered a failure, with only $206 million at the box office. Emilia Pérez, the musical crime caper, was a hit on the festival circuit, but has received polarizing responses from audiences upon its Netflix release.
If the genre still had a hope this year, it was with Jon M. Chu’s Wicked. The first installment of the two-part Broadway adaptation hit theaters on 22 November, boosted by a highly publicized marketing campaign and viral interviews with the cast.
So, how are the two witches of Oz faring in theaters? Here’s everything you need to know about Wicked’s box office results so far.
Wicked box office explained
Before the end of the weekend, Wicked is predicted to make $120 million at the domestic box office.
On Thursday previews, it made $11 million across 3,300 theaters. So far, its total box office from previews comes to $19.2 million.
The budget for Wicked was $150 million.
By comparison, Gladiator 2 (which also opened this weekend) is estimated to make around $86 million in its domestic opening weekend.
What records has it broken?
If Wicked reaches $120 million on opening weekend, it will be the biggest opening in history for a Broadway adaptation, and the fourth-biggest opening of all time for a movie musical.
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The Broadway record was previously held by Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, which earned $31 million in 2014.
This would also make it the third biggest opening for a movie during 2024, slipping in right between Inside Out 2 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Here are the highest-grossing movies of 2024 so far:
- Deadpool & Wolverine: $211,435,291
- Inside Out 2: $154,201,673
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: $111,003,345
- Dune: Part Two: $82,505,391
- Twisters: $81,251,415
- Godzilla x Kong The New Empire: $80,006,561
- Despicable Me 4: $75,009,210
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: $58,400,788
- Kung Fu Panda: $57,989,905
- Bad Boys Ride or Die: $56,527,324
Where does it rank among other movie musicals?
If Wicked reaches its $120 million goal, it will become the sixth-highest grossing movie musical opening of all time.
That would land it between 2023’s The Little Mermaid remake and 2016’s The Jungle Book live-action movie.
Here are the top 10 highest-grossing opening weekends for movie musicals:
- Frozen 2: $358,503,293
- Beauty and the Beast (2017): $357,026,593
- The Lion King (2019): $245,953,703
- Aladdin (2019): $214,700,000
- The Little Mermaid (2023): $164,300,000
- The Jungle Book (2016): $132,200,000
- Frozen: $110,600,000
- Rio: $94,164,414
- High School Musical 3 Senior Year: $84,652,689
- Baahubali 2 The Conclusion: $80,771,971
For more, check out all the other new movies out this month. You can also keep up to date with what’s going on with Wicked Part 2, and find out why Fiyero has a big connection to The Wizard of Oz after Wicked.