It is a tale of two franchise-friendly $250 million tentpoles and to what extent the streamer deserves nuance and mercy for a domestic and global opening weekend that would be an outright disaster for a legacy studio. Sure, Red One was greenlit and budgeted for streaming, but why make excuses for the very streaming companies that helped undercut the legacy studios’ ability to release non-franchise theatricals in the first place, especially when the film in question isn’t a studio programmer like Challengers or a prestige flick like Killers of the Flower Moon?
Meanwhile, hopes are high for Gladiator II (which earned a decent $87 million in its overseas debut) and Wicked Part One (which is set to play the role of the pre-Thanksgiving YA fantasy epic of the year indeed), while Moana II is tracking so high that we’re just hoping that it’s… better than Inside Out 2.
Oh, and the “Glicked” reference in the subhead is entirely a joke to piss off Jeremy, who has been (correctly) rolling his eyes for the last five months over the media’s attempts to position Gladiator II and Wicked Part One as the next #SawPatrol-level theatrical event.
In terms of the written word…
Jeremy Fuster discussed how Wicked Part One is just the latest franchise title to essentially hide the fact that it is “part one of two.”
Ryan Scott’s latest Tales from the Box Office discusses the… sweet mother of god… 30th anniversary of (hot take alert) the best “odd-numbered Star Trek movie,” namely Star Trek Generations.
Lisa Laman notes how and why the biggest Thanksgiving weekend at the box office belongs to 2018, which (as indicated in my Puck column from two weeks ago) is the last time we had an old-fashioned YA fantasy tentpole (Fantastic Beasts 2) on the weekend before the holiday *and* a Turkey Day Disney toon (Ralph Breaks the Internet) as was usually the case in pre-COVID times. It’s also, incidentally, the last time we had a crowded and vibrant November beyond just one (Frozen II in 2019) or two(Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2022) mega-movies Wicked Part One and Moana II.
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Jeremy Fuster - TheWrap
Lisa Laman - Looper, Cultress, Comic Book and Autostraddle
Ryan C. Scott - SlashFilm and Fangoria
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