Weekend Box Office: 'Wicked: For Good' Soars With $150m Opening

Finally, the Winter season at the box office gets an undisputed mega-hit. Wicked: For Good may not make much sense from a narrative perspective — did this really need to be split into two parts when the second half of the musical is so wonky and in dire need of a rewrite? — but it was a genius move by Universal for commercial success. The musical sequel was riding the high of the first movie, as well as the current cultural omnipresence of its cast. The audience was there, and they flew out in droves for Wicked: For Good. It brought in an impressive $150 million from 4,115 theatres. That’s a big step up from the $112.5 million the first one made in its domestic opening. Wicked earned over $758.7 million worldwide by the time its run was complete. Can its follow-up do better?

Bless Rental Family for going up against the titans of Oz in its opening weekend. The very sweet dramedy starring Brendan Fraser never stood a chance, and landed at number five with $3.3 million. Searchlight seemed to lose interest in this one after its fall festival buzz revealed itself to be more muted than desired. It’s a good movie, dangit!

Sisu: Road to Revenge is the sequel to the Finnish action movie Sisu, and the series has earned some strong comparisons to the John Wick franchise. The follow-up debuted at number six with $2.6 million.

Not much in terms of indie releases this past weekend. Everyone knew to get out of Elphaba’s way. Cutting Through Rocks, a documentary about an Iranian councilwoman who trains teenage girls to ride motorcycles, took in $7,933 from one location. Another documentary, Zodiac Killer Project, an unconventional true crime project, grossed $3,800.

This coming week sees the release of sci-fi rom-com Eternity and the Disney sequel Zootopia 2 (in the UK, it’s Zootropolis. No, nobody actually calls it that.)

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