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By Don Chmielewski
LOS ANGELES — “Wicked: For Good” grossed $150 million in the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend, setting a record for a film adaptation of a Broadway musical and becoming one of the best-performing musicals of all time, according to the studio.
The second part of the big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” which reunites Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba with Ariana Grande’s Glinda, had the third-best domestic opening weekend for a musical, behind Disney’s 2019 photorealistic computer-generated version of “The Lion King” and the 2017 remake of “Beauty and the Beast,” according to box office data from Universal Pictures and comScore. Remained.
According to comScore, “Wicked: For Good” also helped lift the moribund North American box office from a nine-week slump, where total ticket sales failed to reach $100 million.
Jim Orr, president of domestic theatrical distribution for Universal, said, “It’s nothing short of satisfying to see the years of hard work from our filmmakers, Marc Platt and Jon Chu, and our extraordinary cast members like Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, and to see it pay off so well.”
Music is not always liked by moviegoers. Examples of moderately performed film adaptations of Broadway hits such as “Dear Evan Hansen” and “In the Heights”, the movie version of the ABBA musical, “Mamma Mia!” Like there are more than cinematic blockbusters.
Risky two-film gamble
The risky nature of the stage-to-screen adaptation led industry analyst Daniel Loria to initially question Universal Pictures’ decision to break the musical Wicked into two films.
“Most other studios would have made this one movie,” said Loria, senior vice president of content strategy for The Box Office Company, which provides data services for the industry. “The fact that you can get two blockbusters out of the same IP is a fantastic achievement.”
Industry insiders credit the enduring appeal of the long-running Broadway musical, director Jon Chu’s inspired casting and an aggressive marketing campaign for the success of “Wickeds.”
“There’s something about it that connects with young audiences in particular,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for comScore. “‘Wicked’ is to the younger generation what ‘The Sound of Music’ was to the older generation.”
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
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