Wicked: For Good came out on Friday. I’m hoping to see it this upcoming Friday, Black Friday. (I know what happens; I saw the play on what ended up being Idina Mendel’s final full performance.) When the first part came out last year a lot of us were skeptical about it, specifically Ariana Grande’s casting and Jon M. Chu’s decision to release it in two parts. I decided to wait to watch it at home and was pleasantly blown away by how good it was. Last year, Wicked opened at the box office with a respectable $112.5 million. Well, I must not be alone in my eagerness to see the second part on the big screen because For Good ended up making $150 million this past weekend. This places it in the number two spot for opening weekends in 2025, about $12 million behind A Minecraft Movie.

“Wicked: For Good,” the second film in the two-part movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, made its debut with a strong $150 million in North America this weekend, according to estimates from Comscore. The haul surpasses the $112.5 million domestic launch of the original “Wicked” movie, meaning “For Good” has set a new record for biggest opening weekend ever for a film based on a Broadway show. The record was previously held by the first “Wicked.”

“Wicked: For Good” also snagged the second-biggest opening weekend of the year in North America. It came in a bit below “A Minecraft Movie,” which opened with $162.7 million in April, but above “Lilo & Stitch,” which took in $146 million in its first three days of release. The Disney live-action remake hit theaters over the long Memorial Day weekend and debuted with $182.6 million, including Monday grosses.

Cynthia Erivo and ​​Ariana Grande reprise their Oscar-nominated roles of Elphaba and Glinda, respectively, in “For Good,” which picks up where the Broadway show’s second act starts and wraps up the characters’ stories while tying into the events of “The Wizard of Oz.”

Critics were generally more mixed on “For Good” than the first “Wicked,” but audience reception appears to be comparable to the original. Moviegoers polled by CinemaScore gave “Wicked: For Good” an average grade of A, the same rating as 2024’s “Wicked.”

The film’s success gives theaters the giant hit they were waiting for after a fairly quiet fall movie season. In recent months, several titles have performed below expectations, from the Bruce Springsteen biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” to Disney’s latest “Tron” sequel “Tron: Ares.”

Prior to “For Good,” the last movie to open with more than $100 million at the North American box office was “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” in July.

But movie theaters won’t have to wait long for more blockbusters, with the sequel to the animated smash hit “Zootopia” set to open Nov. 26 for Thanksgiving weekend, almost a decade after the original Disney movie grossed more than $1 billion globally. That will be followed soon after by the highly anticipated “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” James Cameron’s second sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time, 2009’s “Avatar.”

[From USA Today]

This reminds me of the report in September that more Americans are streaming new movies at home instead of seeing them in theaters. The big exception to this trend is that people still want to go to the cinema to see movies that are “events” or “experiences.” Wicked: For Good clearly falls into this category, and it’s not simply because it;s a movie made for theatre kids. People who watched the first movie at home were invested enough to buy a ticket and put in the effort to make it an event. (I hope Hollywood doesn’t take the wrong lesson away from this, though. Big movies will take care of the convenience problem, but there’s still a big issue with the cost of seeing a movie.)

Oh, and while For Good hasn’t gotten the best reviews, I’ve seen a lot of people on social media say that they really liked it overall. There are some valid claims about the movie’s pacing and use of low-lighting making it hard to see. I think overall, though, critics just forget that Act II is pretty dark (and the book is even darker). There aren’t really any big, happy songs that make for big spectacles like Act I has. Also, hold the phone. Zootopia 2 is out this week?! I had no idea! The first one is one of my favorites. I have been waiting for the sequel to come out for YEARS.

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photos credit: Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon