Folks have really been itching to make this weekend the next Barbenheimer. Nobody felt the need to combine Ghostbusters and Gremlins into a single name when they both debuted on the same day back in 1984, but hey, movie fans did the marketing teams a solid. Combine this weekend’s titles at your own peril, but there is at least a momentary similarity in a PG-rated film of a well-known property headlined by women doubled up with a seemingly more dude-centric fanbase with an R rating. The bottom line is that there’s something for everyone this weekend. But does that mean both will capture the same level of success as Barbie and Oppenheimer?
King of the Crop: Wicked Scores Third Biggest Opening of the Year
It has been a long time coming. Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West was turned into a Broadway sensation in 2003 by Stephen Schwartz that is still running today. The film version of Wicked had plans for a 2016 big screen debut. Then it was 2019. That release date was ultimately given to Cats by Universal. Then a 2021 release date was given to Sing 2, while the reins went from Stephen Daldry to Jon M. Chu. Now all of its fans are flocking to theaters to see, well, the first half of the alternative Wizard of Oz tale. And boy did they flock.
While not quite Barbie numbers ($162 million opening), Chu’s Wicked: Part One amassed $114 million in ticket sales for the third-best start of 2024 behind Deadpool & Wolverine’s $211.4 million and Inside Out 2’s $154.2 million. It beat out Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ($111 million) and now has the 10th-highest November opening ever, a list that contains three Twilights, two Hunger Games, a Harry Potter, a Black Panther, a Ragnarok, and ol’ Frozen II. That’s a list with a range from $281 million up to nearly $454 million. Where is Wicked going to land?
Internationally it made an additional $50 million, giving it a worldwide tally of $164 million. That’s a good start in recouping its $150 million budget. Like Wicked, seven of those November openings were released the weekend before Thanksgiving, and next week it will be challenged by Disney’s Moana 2, which is expected to have an all-time holiday opening. The legs on Wicked could be fierce, though, as its demographics are wide, and it could go toe-to-toe all the way through Christmas and into 2025. Just in time, too, since 2024 was the first November since 1998 to have its first three weekends not register a single cumulative gross of $100 million at the box office. Wicked stopped that trend all but itself.
The Top 10 and Beyond: Gladiator II Entertains Audiences with Solid Debut
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II was no slouch this weekend either. Or was it? Its $55.5 million start to Wicked’s $114 million fulfills the Barbenheimer/Glicked prophecy a bit, as Oppenheimer grossed roughly half ($82.4 million) of Barbie’s opening. Gladiator II’s budget is also at least twice as much as Oppenheimer’s, though, in another case of Ridley just spending every dollar he can. Back in May 2000, the first Gladiator opened the summer season to $34.8 million and went on to gross $187.7 million domestic and $465.5 million worldwide on a $103 million budget, the sixth-highest of that year behind The Perfect Storm, Disney’s Dinosaur, Mission: Impossible II, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Patriot. Gladiator went on to be one of the most profitable films of 2000 along with M:I 2, Cast Away, What Women Want, and Meet the Parents, not to mention it won Best Picture at the Oscars.
24 years later, Gladiator II is in a battle for the highest budget of 2024, depending on which conservative estimates of it and Red One are to be believed. So Paramount is hoping that interest and inflation will propel the sequel past those numbers of a bygone era. The film had already grossed nearly $100 million internationally before even playing in the States, where it opened with the best start for an R-rated film ever in November, displacing a record held for 22 years by 8 Mile ($51.2 million). The Matrix Revolutions has held the highest gross record since 2003 with $139.3 million. Gladiator II could beat that as well, unless the less-than-enthusiastic word-of-mouth catches up to it. (A B Cinemascore compared to an A for the original.) Will the lack of options help it reach the domestic goal it seeks to help get it into profit, or will the international audience be enough?
As we watched the Napoleon numbers roll in last year, we noted how Ridley Scott has not had a true blue box office success since The Martian in 2015. Alien: Covenant almost broke even in 2017, but All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci (the latter two both during the 2021 pandemic), and particularly last year’s Napoleon were either failures or outright disasters. Since Gladiator there has been Hannibal, American Gangster, Prometheus, and even The Counselor, which succeeded in part thanks to having the lowest budget of his career ($25 million) since
Thelma and Louise in 1991.
Since the bygone days of Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire, there have only been five films to open lower than $56 million in November and gross $200 million. They were How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Blind Side, Bohemian Rhapsody, Coco, and Tangled. Not exactly the Gladiator II crowd. It should reach over $100 million over the holiday, but at what point, and how much more? If the $210 million estimate on its production is an accurate one, this is still fighting an uphill battle that is going to be won or lost on the international side. It is over $165 million overseas to date, but it may need close to $400 million to not register as another big budget failure for Scott. With just $3 million coming in from China, that number appears very unlikely.
The true slouch in theaters right now is Red One, at least according to those watching the books at Amazon. It fell nearly $2 million from its estimates last weekend and is now down 59% to $13.2 million for a total of $52.9 million. With a budget anywhere from $200 to $250 million and an international haul of just $64 million so far, this is looking like a disaster. Right now, domestically, this is not much more than The Best Man Holiday pulled in over 10 days ($50.3 million) with a second weekend of $12.4 million. That has Red One looking at a landing in just the $70-80 million range unless it has a great holiday word-of-mouth surge, which seems unlikely in the Wicked-Gladiator-Moana world that is about to engulf it. Its odds of hitting $100 million are very small. At this point its odds of hitting $200 million worldwide seem very small.
In fourth place is the latest from Angel Studios, Bonhoeffer, opening to $5.1 million in 1,900 theaters. That is a better start than their last two releases, Sound of Hope ($3.0 million) and Sight ($2.7 million), though not quite as high as Cabrini back in March ($7.1 million). None of their films apart from their massive success story, Sound of Freedom, have grossed $20 million. Cabrini, their second best with $19.5 million, still carried an enormous budget of $50 million. But their brand still pulls in higher numbers than most attempts at limited platform releases.
Down to fifth place is Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance, which has kind of nosedived after three straight weeks at No. 1. At $4 million in its fifth weekend, its total is now at $133.8 million. That is $24 million behind the pace of Black Adam and a cool million behind that DC offering’s fifth weekend. What once looked like a run towards $160 million domestic now looks like something in the $140-145 million range. No matter, though, as it is over $456 million worldwide, and even if it comes in just shy of the half-billion milestone, it’s looking to become the studio’s biggest success of the year.
In sixth place, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is now putting together some space between it and its competitor, Heretic, for the past two weeks. Another $3.5 million puts the film over $25 million, while Bryan Wood and Scott Beck’s anti-faith-based horror film made $2.2 million and carries a total of $24.7 million. Both of these are on the positive sides of the ledger for Lionsgate and A24 and will still have audiences over the holiday next week. The pre-holiday horror of Smile 2 also lasted another week with $1.11 million for a total of $67.7 million and over $134 million worldwide.
In between them in seventh place is Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot. One of the great success stories of the year, the animated film made another $2 million to bring its total nearly $141 million. It has nearly reached bragging rights by earning more than four times its opening weekend. Right now it stands at approximately at a 3.93 multiple and, even better, $317 million globally. Meanwhile, Focus should be very pleased with the performance of Conclave. Down to 1,013 theaters this weekend, it still made the top 10 and grossed $1.1 million to bring its total to $28.9 million. It’s going to need a little more overseas help to make back it $20 million budget, but the marketing, word-of-mouth, and — say it with me — EXPANSION from the get-go is going to give the company their first $30+ million release since 2022.
Last week in 1,185 theaters, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain grossed $2.22 million. This weekend in the same number of theaters it made $1.11 million. After four weeks of limited and semi-wide release, the film has made $4.9 million. Sean Baker’s Anora lost 1,000 theaters this week, which resulted in just $675,000 and a total gross of $12 million, the filmmaker’s highest gross to date. Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light had a solid $46,876 opening last week in three theaters. This week in 19, the film grossed $65,000 and has now made $135,000 to date for the Sideshow/Janus Films release, which also put out the dialogue-free animated film Flow in two theaters this weekend. It grossed an estimated $50,764 for a per-theater average of $25,382. It will expand over the coming weeks.
On the Vine: Moana 2 Hopes to Ride the Thanksgiving Wave to Big Numbers
As already mentioned, Disney’s Moana 2 is expected to best Frozen II’s numbers over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday. Those numbers were second-week numbers, but they were still the best numbers Thanksgiving ever had. Anyway, the film originally imagined as a series for Disney+ is going to likely break a record, best the original’s gross, and make $300 million that would not have been made with a streaming release. Also next week, A24 releases Luca Guadagnino’s second film of 2024 with Queer, which has generated awards buzz for Daniel Craig and currently sports a respectable Tomatometer score from critics from the festival circuit.
Full List of Box Office Results: November 22-24, 2024
-
90%
97%
Wicked
(2024)
– $114 million ($114 million total)
-
72%
84%
Gladiator II
(2024)
– $55.5 million ($55.5 million total)
-
31%
91%
Red One
(2024)
– $13.2 million ($52.9 million total)
-
59%
92%
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.
(2024)
– $5.1 million ($5.1 million total)
-
41%
81%
Venom: The Last Dance
(2024)
– $4 million ($133.8 million total)
-
91%
97%
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
(2024)
– $3.5 million ($25.5 million total)
-
91%
77%
Heretic
(2024)
– $2.23 million ($24.7 million total)
-
97%
98%
The Wild Robot
(2024)
– $2 million ($140.7 million total)
-
86%
81%
Smile 2
(2024)
– $1.11 million ($67.7 million total)
-
96%
79%
A Real Pain
(2024)
– $1.109 million ($4.96 million total)
Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast.
[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]
Thumbnail image by ©Universal Pictures
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