WICKED – 10 Oscar® Nominations Including Best Picture
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In the month since its arrival on PVOD, Wicked Part One has been nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Meanwhile, it notched a record $70 million in its first week of domestic digital availability and has continued to climb the box office charts, earning an additional $41 million in North America.
The first installment of a two-part adaptation of the long-running and generationally popular Broadway show has become a pop culture phenomenon, pushing its theatrical earnings to $471 million in North America and $725 million worldwide. Along with strong reviews and white-hot buzz, the Jon M. Chu-directed musical fantasy is already the top-earning Broadway adaptation domestically (ahead of Grease) and worldwide (ahead of Mamma Mia!).
Among all movie musicals, it is behind only Frozen II ($477 million in 2019) and Disney’s live-action remakes of Beauty and the Beast ($504 million in 2017) and The Lion King ($543 million in 2019) in unadjusted domestic earnings. It has soared past the lifetime global totals for any musical not released by the Walt Disney Company.
Having surpassed the unadjusted domestic total of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, this film is Universal’s third-biggest North American grosser of all time, second only to Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($574 million in 2023) and Amblin’s Jurassic World ($652 million in 2015).
After exceeding the $460 million lifetime total of Star Wars: A New Hope, it ranks among the biggest new-to-cinema franchise launchers ever. Not a remake, reboot, direct prequel, or direct sequel to an existing film franchise, it stands alongside Barbie, Black Panther, Titanic, and Avatar atop a very rare summit.
Wicked: For Good is set to rock and/or roll in theaters next November.
I didn't realize that domestically, Wicked is only $6m away from passing Frozen 2, which it probably will at this point due to inevitable Oscar reissues, and Moana 2 won't surpass it at this rate, so in terms of all musicals, it will only be behind Disney's top two live-action remakes. Wicked: For Good even has a chance of passing those two remakes to become the highest-grossing musical ever domestically, though it certainly won't pass the top two Universal domestic grossers. Does Black Panther count on that new-to-cinemas list, since we already saw this version of the character T'Challa in Captain America: Civil War, making his movie a sequel/spin-off "next adventure" focusing on an already introduced character? I suppose that makes Wicked's (and James Cameron and Greta Gerwig's) success even more impressive.