Universal Corp – TheNewsHub https://thenewshub.in Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:15:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 'Wicked' tallies $19 million in previews, as 'Gladiator II' team-up heads for $200 million opening weekend https://thenewshub.in/2024/11/22/wicked-tallies-19-million-in-previews-as-gladiator-ii-team-up-heads-for-200-million-opening-weekend/ https://thenewshub.in/2024/11/22/wicked-tallies-19-million-in-previews-as-gladiator-ii-team-up-heads-for-200-million-opening-weekend/?noamp=mobile#respond Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:15:43 +0000 https://thenewshub.in/2024/11/22/wicked-tallies-19-million-in-previews-as-gladiator-ii-team-up-heads-for-200-million-opening-weekend/

Posters for Wicked and Gladiator II

Sources: Universal (L), Paramount (R)

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 at 3.5 stars or higher, stands at 99% with more than 2,500 ratings.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande star as Elphaba and Glinda in Universal’s “Wicked.”

Universal

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” took in $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.

Marcus Corp., owner of Marcus Theatres and Marcus Hotels & Resorts. “Take care of our customers. Give the customers that show up a great experience. Make sure that lines are 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.”

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