Box Office Report: Witchy Gladiators

It was the battle of the titans this past weekend. Witches versus Gladiators. Glicked? Wickiator? Okay, we never settled on a name and that’s fine because shoehorned-in attempts to try and make this the new Barbenheimer never made sense. That’s a one-off phenomenon, kids, never to be seen again. Besides, we all knew who would win this duel.

Wicked is one of the biggest musicals of the 21st century, and Universal spent a lot of money to make this thing a hit. And it’s paid off. It soared to the top of the box office with a gravity-defying $114 million from 3,888 theatres. That gives it the third-biggest domestic debut of the year, right behind big IPs like Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2. Of course, it’s not like Wicked is a scrappy underdog based on some indie title nobody’s ever heard of. Still, given how timid studios have been in recent years to advertise their musicals as, you know, musicals, this is a good result for the movie and genre.

Behind it at number two was, fittingly, Gladiator II. Ridley Scott’s unexpected prequel earned $55.5 million from 3,573 theatres. It still seems unlikely that this one will replicate the runaway success of its 2000 predecessor, partly because reviews weren’t as sturdy and the budget was wildly higher (reported to be somewhere between $250 and 310 million.)

The thing about the Barbenheimer trend is that both of those films saw their commercial successes play out over a long Summer. They were slow-burn hits as well as instant ones, with Oppenheimer in particular benefitting well from repeat visits, IMAX screenings, and word-of-mouth. They built up their grosses over a long time. I’m not sure if these two can make that happen in the same way. The Christmas season is busier but also the upcoming competition seems more likely to cross over with those films’ audiences. I do think Wicked will keep bringing in big bucks, especially when it gets those sing-along screenings.

There was another new release this week. That’s right, Angel Studios is back with a new movie to terrorize us with. Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. is a historical drama based on the story of the German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This life is actually fascinating but this movie is a reported mess. Experts on Bonhoeffer, his own family, and actors in the damn film have condemned Angel Studios for what they say is a flagrant misuse of the real man’s life to promote Christian nationalism. The people who shoved Sound of Freedom into our faces are lying propagandists? Well, I am shocked to hear that. But clearly, there’s still an audience for that because it made just over $5.12 million from 1,900 locations.

In limited release news: the Latvian animated movie Flow, about a cat, earned $50,764 from two cinemas; Sabbath Queen, about an ex-Orthodox rabbi who becomes a drag queen, brought in $17,500 in one location; and Porcelain War, a documentary about creating art during the war in Ukraine, grossed $11,227 from one theatre.

This coming week sees the release of Moana 2.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.