‘Wicked’ Earns $19 Million In Previews, ‘Gladiator II’ $6M+

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UPDATED AFTER EXCLUSIVE: Universal is calling Wicked Part One‘s previews at $19.2 million.

That number for the Jon M. Chu-directed, Cynthia Erivo- and Ariana Grande-starring feature take of the Broadway musical is comprised of Monday and Wednesday fan screenings, plus Thursday’s previews that began at 2 p.m.

Broken down: Monday’s Amazon Prime screenings generated $2.5M at 750 theatres in the U.S. Wednesday advance screenings grossed another $5.7M from 2,000 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. Standard previews yesterday at 3,300 theaters yielded a total Thursday gross of $11M.

Just in terms of pure advance cash, Wicked is just under the $23M preview cash of Disney’s 2019 The Lion King, and Warner Bros’ Barbie at $22.3M (that gross wsa from both Wednesday and Thursday shows). It’s way ahead of Disney’s 2017 live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast ($16.3M). Updated gut from tracking this AM on Wicked is $120M+. The other factor to keep in mind on heavy female-skewing movies is that they can cave on a Saturday, e.g., Barbie was down 32% off Friday/previews and Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 was off 26%. But there are exceptions, particularly on movies that have a family factor, e.g., Beauty and the Beast dipped -2% between its Friday to Saturday.

Paramount’s official number on the R-rated Gladiator II is $6.5M at 3,200 locations. That preview figure is right in the neighborhood of myriad recent sequels that delivered varying openings, including Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ($6.6M previews, $58.4M 3-day), No Time to Die ($6.3M, $55.2M) and Bad Boys for Life ($6.3M, $62.5M). There’s also the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny comp. Tracking’s updated forecast for the sequel epic directed by Ridley Scott and starring Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington is $59M-$66M. Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a healthy 84%.

RELATED: Jon M. Chu’s ‘Wicked’ Soundtrack: What Songs Are In ‘Part 1’?

Keeping tabs: The running cume for the 2024 box office through November 17 stood at $7 billion, $889M behind the same period in 2023 and 9% ahead of the same period in 2022 (the Top Gun: Maverick box office year). This is all according to Comscore. Starting this weekend through New Year’s Eve, can we clear another $2 billion to get us to last year’s $9B final?

PREVIOUS EXCLUSIVE: From New York City to Kansas and onward to the City of Angels, mobs are going to the movies tonight as Universal’s long-awaited Wicked Part One and Paramount’s Gladiator II square off for what is expected to be one of the year’s richest weekends. To date, the biggest weekend for all titles year-to-date was July 26-28, per Comscore, when Deadpool & Wolverine sent the entire marketplace to $285.3 million.

Early figures tonight — not attributed to any studios because they stay mum until tomorrow morning — is that Wicked is casting an estimated spell of $8M tonight alone. However, if you count Monday’s Amazon promotion previews and last night’s premium-format fan showings, that total preview tally flies to around $20M, I hear. As we told you previously, we heard presales were around $30M; however, once there’s a must-see title for female moviegoers, they’ll definitely book a date to the cinema. With walk-up business unpredictable, the outlook is wild for Wicked, with a three-day total estimated between $130M-$150M. The argument on the lower end of the projection is that the Jon M. Chu-directed, Marc Platt-produced movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes.

The biggest opening for any feature musical is Jon Favreau’s 2019 The Lion King at $191.7M; it had a runtime of 1 hour and 58 minutes. The biggest opening for a movie based on a Broadway musical is technically Universal’s Mamma Mia!, at $27.7M in 2008. Even though the sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, opened bigger at $34.9M, it wasn’t based on a stage musical. Wicked has all the spells to overperform this weekend at 90% certified fresh with critics and a 99% audiences score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Words cannot to begin to detail the amount of marketing oomph Universal put behind this movie, and more amazingly, they did so on the feature adaptation of a Broadway musical — a genre with which Hollywood has a love-hate relationship. Wicked‘s marketing playbook makes Disney’s promotional plans for Star Wars: The Force Awakens look like some grassroots guerrilla stunt for a SXSW movie.

Granted, the means by which Uni made its preview cash is apples to oranges compared with previous titles, however, in terms of pure dollars, Wicked‘s total cash is ahead of Beauty and the Beast‘s $16.3M as well as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1‘s $17M, both female-skewing tentpoles. Beauty and the Beast clocked at 2 hours and 9 minutes and opened to $174.7M, while Mockingjay 1 was 2 hours and 3 minutes and debuted to $121.8M.

Gladiator II, meanwhile is between $6.5M-$7M and that’s for Thursday alone. Duly note, Paramount didn’t have big preview days in advance, just a small 200-theater “Screen Unseen” sneak. Critics really have nothing to complain about with the Ridley Scott-directed sequel at 72% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Gladiator II‘s preview dough is akin to that of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($7.2M Thursday) which got it to a $60.3M opening. That’s right around what Gladiator II is expected to conquer by Sunday.

As we always say on Thursday, take these estimates with a grain of salt. If the studio reports lower, it doesn’t necessarily mean a movie is without momentum.

RELATED: Where To Watch ‘Gladiator’: Is Ridley Scott’s 2000 Film Streaming?

What was clear from Deadline’s rounds at theaters tonight is if you want to get your wiccan on, ya dress up and head over to the TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, or you head to a place that’s no place like home: re Dorothy’s home in Kansas City, KS. Meanwhile, over at the AMC in Burbank, CA, which is usually any film’s highest-grossing cinema in the nation in a given weekend, the 6 p.m. Imax of Gladiator II was sold out.

Natalie Sitek contributed to this report.

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