Box Office: 'Mean Girls' and 'Wonka' Prove That Musicals Are Still Fetch

Paramount's intended-for-streaming adaptation opened with $32 million over the holiday while WBD's Timothée Chalamet-led prequel just topped $500 million global

Paramount’s Mean Girls topped the weekend box office over the MLK holiday, earning a projected $31.1 million over its debut Fri-Mon frame. That’s not half-bad for a $35 million, star-free musical that was greenlit and produced with the intent of debuting on Paramount+. It’s also the third live-action musical to debut with good-to-great theatrical results in just under a month, alongside Wonka (which just passed $505 million global while becoming – by default – the holiday event flick of 2023) and The Color Purple (which opened with a near-record $18 million Christmas Day launch).  

I’ve long argued that live-action musicals were relatively safe theatrical sub-genres, alongside (in pre-Covid days) the Marvel/DC superhero movie and the high-concept horror flick. Like the western, the musical is one of those old-school genres that everyone likes to say is dead or disliked by the masses, but whenever Hollywood delivers one that, well, delivers (see the Denzel Washington/Chris Pratt remake of The Magnificent Seven), audiences show up.