‘Wicked’ tallies $19M in previews, as ‘Gladiator II’ team-up heads for $200M opening weekend

The box office this weekend will be painted pink and green, with a splash 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 combined ticket sales this weekend.

″‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ are the kind of counter-programming duo punch movie theaters and audiences have been eagerly anticipating,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “This fall’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 corridor with ‘Moana 2’ also ready to deliver big results during Thanksgiving next week.”

“Wicked” has already tallied $19.2 million at the domestic box office from advance screenings held during the week. Amazon Prime members 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. “Wicked” snared an additional $11 million from standard Thursday night preview screenings at around 3,300 theaters.

Tracking 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 projecting an even higher three-day total for the film’s debut weekend.

Hollywood has struggled to market and make a profit on movie musicals in recent years. However, the industry has also seen fan-favorite IP-driven titles outperform. With “Wicked” being based on one of Broadway’s most popular musicals, box office analysts are finding it tricky to predict where it will land.

Heading into its opening, “Wicked” held a 92% “Fresh” rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes from more than 160 critics. Its popcornmeter, a metric the site uses to calculate what percentage of verified movie ticket holders rated the film with 3.5 stars or higher, stands at 99% with more than 2,500 ratings.

Whatever it hauls in for the weekend, “Wicked” should debut as the highest-opening Broadway adaptation in cinematic history. The current record holder is Disney’s “Into the Woods,” which secured $31 million during its first three days in theaters in 2014, according to data from Comscore.

Meanwhile, “Gladiator II” tallied $6.5 million from Thursday previews and is expected to add between $60 million and $80 million to the domestic weekend tally. The film, which arrives 24 years after the original, has secured a 73% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes from more than 200 reviews. For comparison, “Gladiator” snared $34.8 million during its opening weekend back in May 2000.

“The so-called ‘Glicked’ movie mashup is reminiscent of the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon and is creating a cultural buzz,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “And though not quite at that level, has certainly raised the profile of both films and that combined with overwhelming positive reviews has positioned these two very different movies for opening weekend glory and more importantly long-term playability through the holidays.”

Between “Wicked,” “Gladiator II” and previously released films still in theaters, box office analysts foresee a weekend of ticket sales between $200 million and $250 million. While impressive, that would still fall outside of the top 20 highest-grossing weekends of all time, according to data from Comscore.

The “Barbenheimer” weekend of July 21, 2023, topped $311 million, the fourth-highest weekend haul of all time.

“It’s not all about the first hours or days, though,” Robbins noted. “These films can and probably will play well for weeks to come, especially if word of mouth mirrors that of critics’ reactions.”

This weekend’s tally will help bolster the overall annual box office, which lags 11% behind 2023 levels during the same 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 maximize what’s coming in that door,” said Greg Marcus, CEO of Marcus Corporation, owner of Marcus Theatres and Marcus Hotels and Resorts. “Take care of our customers. Give the customers that show up a great experience. Make sure that lines are as 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 movies and enjoy something with other people.”

Marcus Theatres alongside dozens of other cinema chains, big and small, are offering guests drink and food specials, themed popcorn buckets and beverage containers as well as other movie merchandise at their locations.

Cinemark has a “Gladiator II” popcorn bucket shaped like the Colosseum and a gladiator helmet that fits over its drink cups to hold popcorn. Regal has a witch hat-shaped cup. AMC’s menu features pink and green candy-coated popcorn as well as a collection of themed drinks like green apple ICEE, Sprite variants called Ozdust Punch and Emerald Elixir and alcoholic beverages named Popular Pink and Gravity Green.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, CNBC, Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes. NBCUniversal is the distributor of “Wicked.”