Gravity-defying debuts for ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator’

NEW YORK (AP):

With a combined $270 million in worldwide ticket sales, Wicked and Gladiator II breathed fresh life into a box office that has struggled lately, leading to one of the busiest movie-going weekends of the year.

Jon M. Chu’s lavish big-budget musical Wicked starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, debuted with $114 million domestically and $164.2 million globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates Sunday. That made it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2. It’s also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, a sequel to his 2000 best picture-winning original, launched with $55.5 million in ticket sales. With a price tag of about $250 million to produce it, Gladiator II was a big bet by Paramount Pictures to return to the Coliseum with a largely new cast, led by Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal. While it opened with a touch less than the $60 million predicted in domestic ticket sales, the movie has performed well overseas. It added $50.5 million internationally.

Going into the weekend, box office was down about 11 per cent from last year and some 25 per cent from pre-pandemic times. That meant this week’s two headline films led a much-needed resurgence for theatres.

“This weekend’s two strong openers are invigorating a box office that fell apart after a good summer,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment.

The collision of the two movies led to some echoes of the Barbenheimer effect of last year, when Barbie and Oppenheimer launched simultaneously. The nickname this time, “Glicked”, wasn’t quite as catchy and the cultural imprint was also notably less.

But the counter-programming effect was still potent for both films, which were split broadly along gender lines. And it was again the female-leaning release that easily won the weekend. About 72 per cent of ticket buyers for Wicked were female, while 61 per cent of those seeing Gladiator II were male.

Both movies pulled out all the stops in global advertising campaigns that spanned everything from Wicked Mattel dolls (some of which led to an awkward recall) to an Airbnb cross-promotion with the actual Colosseum in Rome. For Gladiator II Paramount even took the unusual step of simultaneously running a one-minute trailer on more than 4,000 TV networks, radio station and digital platforms.

Though Wicked will face some direct competition from Moana 2, it would seem to be better set up for a long and lucrative run in theatres. Producers, perhaps sensing a hit, also took the step of splitting the film in two. Part two, already filmed, is due out next November.

Gladiator II has also enjoyed good reviews, particularly for Washington’s charismatic performance. It launched in many overseas markets a week ago, earning $87 million before landing in North America.