Box Office: Six Key Takeaways As 'Wicked Part One' Continues to Defy Gravity

The musical fantasy earned $16 million on Monday, dropping far less from Sunday than those pre-Thanksgiving Harry Potter, Twilight Saga and Hunger Games flicks.

With $15.8 million on Monday, down just 49% from its $30.8 million Sunday, Universal’s Wicked Part One has earned $129 million in four days of domestic play. It notched with a far better Sunday-to-Monday hold than the various pre-Thanksgiving YA flicks (Harry Potter 1, 4, 7, Hunger Games 2, 3, 4, Twilight 1, 2, 4, 5, the first two Fantastic Beasts films), which usually dropped 60%-72% in their first Monday. So… it’s kinda defying gravity?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes fell 51% on day four, with far lower raw grosses. Lionsgate’s (shockingly good) Francis Lawrence-helmed and Rachel Zegler-starring Hunger Games prequel set a new record — a whopping 3.7x its $45 million debut weekend — for a pre-Thanksgiving YA fantasy flick. Legs on that scale would give Jon M. Chu’s $145 million musical fantasy over/under $250 million in North America by the end of next weekend.

Whether it keeps a-chugging alongside Moana II and Gladiator II (which crossed $60 million after dropping 59% and grossing $5.55 million on Monday) and flirts with a $400 million-plus domestic finish, it’s not just a one-weekend wonder. So now it’s time for some “lessons learned” and “key takeaways.” Some of these will be painfully obvious, but most of them fall into the “should be obvious, but maybe we all need a reminder” category. Regardless, in no actual order.