Wicked: For Good brought in $150 million in the US and Canada in its opening weekend, setting a record for a film adaptation of a Broadway musical and ranking among the best-performing musicals of all time, according to the studio.
The second half of the big-screen adaptation of Wicked, which reunites Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba with Ariana Grande’s Glinda, posted the third-best domestic opening weekend for a musical ever, behind Disney’s 2019 photorealistic computer-generated version of The Lion King and its 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast, according to Universal Pictures and Comscore’s box office tallies.
Wicked: For Good also helped lift a moribund North American box office from a nine-week slump, where total ticket sales failed to reach $100m, according to Comscore.
“It’s absolutely tremendous to see all the hard work that our filmmakers, Marc Platt and Jon Chu, and our extraordinary cast of Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, put in for years, and to see it pay off so handsomely is just beyond satisfying,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic theatrical distribution.
Musicals don’t always appeal to movie-goers. Examples of modestly performing film adaptations of Broadway hits like Dear Evan Hansen and In the Heights outnumber cinematic blockbusters like the movie version of the ABBA musical, Mamma Mia!
“Wicked is to the younger generation what The Sound of Music was to an older generation.” said Comscore’s box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian.
&uuid=(email))