It’s such a nice masculine/feminine combo. Gladiator is the beneficiary.

Wicked sales are off to a rocking start as well. Should be a good weekend at BO with Gladiator and we have Moana 2 releasing during Thanksgiving.

How is Gladiator selling?

Gladiator looks good as well. But Wicked has stronger sales so far. But there is still time to go. Let us hope buzz near release is strong.

Tbf Wicked seems like the more fan heavy movie (both in early sales + walk up ratio), it’s hard to imagine it having better walkups than Gladiator (much easier since Gladiator is basically a standard action movie whereas Wicked is more of a niche flick)

Wicked is a fantasy family musical flick really similar to what Disney makes. I don’t see any reason besides the Part one thing dissuading general audiences

General audiences will obviously be drawn to it, but I don’t think it will have a lot of people on weekend of release going “oh let’s go see wicked”(I think most of those people will do that earlier) whereas I could definitely see a fair amount of people just deciding to see Gladiator on opening weekend since it’s the new buzzy action movie.

Wicked is looking like having double digits previews. Of course it can pull in a joker in having terrible buzz/reviews in the final week cratering all expectations. Barring that a big OW should happen.

$100M+ 5-day for Wicked
$65M+ 5-day for Gladiator

The 5 day is their second weekend

Fandango reports Wicked had its 2nd biggest first day presales of the year.

Also, apparently a bunch of theaters were closed in Florida so pre-sales could have been even higher for Wicked.

Seems Wicked is headed for a $80M+ OW imo. I do think Gladiator is going to start small but with Thanksgiving and Christmas could see it play for a longer period.

I don't think the ratio difference in OWs will be that far off from Barbie / Oppenheimer here though the totals will be much closer.

Also sort of cool that both IP got big in the same time period. Wicked hit Broadway in fall 2003 and won best musical in 2004. Gladiator opened in 2000 and won best picture in 2001. So both are early 00s properties.

Between Moana, Gladiator and Wicked going for three audiences and Here maybe pulling in older adult drama crowd looking for a less violent movie than Gladiator, could be a massive Thanksgiving.

After Deadpool I’m assuming?

https://x.com/PopBase/status/1844425739501965743

2nd biggest OD presales after D&W. Impressive its ahead of fan driven Dune 2. 100m+ OW is happening.

Wicked will be fan driven too, and also female driven so it could be as front loaded as Dune or more so. Though it’s encouraging so far.

Even if it follows Dune 2, its going to open bigger. There are folks who are believing in it coming near Barbie OW. I would not go that far for sure. barbie had a monster presales run for sure. Not easy to replicate for any movie.

I’m pretty confident it’s not reaching Barbie, that had a crazy end

Gonna guess 3/4s of Barbie's opening, around 120m

Wicked is 46 min longer than Barbie (2 hr 40 min) so its going to be hard pressed to reach Barbie (1 hr 54 min). Only so many run times it can have but definitely feels like it could experience capacity issues.

Gladiator is 2 hr 28 min. Here is 1 hr 44 min in comparison.

If Wicked is longer than Gladiator II it's too long.

How could Wicked be 2 hrs 40 minutes and only be part one that makes no sense

That's according to a Google search with an article from Fandango mentioning that run time. The Broadway musical was 2 hrs and 45 minutes so quite something that they've managed to stretch that last 5 min to a whole other movie!

That's also with a 15 min intermission time so Wicked Part 1 will actually be 10 minutes longer than the entire Broadway show.

Oh Hollywood $$$

It's obvious what's happened here. The lazy Fandango writer doesn't know how long it will be so just used the Broadway runtime. It would be insane if the movie was that long. Surely it won't be.

The running time of 2 hrs and 40 minutes is, in fact, very true. They have apparently incorporated a lot from the book as well.

Empire is going out with $100M+ for Wicked based on pre-sales so so far out a very positive sign.

Just need Gladiator to pull an Oppenheimer at this point.