base talk Did Wicked underperform at the box office?

[Thuggin]

Some of you should stick to commenting on music charts.  Based off the domestic numbers alone, this is not a flop or anything of the sort. Just because people who knew nothing about box office grosses got carried away by the initial hype and threw out $1B based on "Barbie was a heavily marketed movie popular with women that also grossed $1B so this should too", didn't make $1B the floor for success. On the prediction threads before the movie came out, I said $700M and that's where the movie looks like it's heading.

 

Do people not understand how rare $1B is outside of Marvel / Disney movies? Wicked will likely become the highest grossing Broadway to film adaptation. The second film will basically be all profit given the success of the first. Marketing was never going to change the fact that the original Wicked production is unknown internationally and these days it's extremely difficult getting people to the theaters when it's not a sequel in a beloved established franchise. The marketing is helping establish Wicked/Oz as more of a global IP, so let's see how the film does on streaming. I wouldn't be surprised if the second film does a lot better outside the US, just as Catching Fire did following The Hunger Games.

[Da Vinci]

I admit I made a mistake of comparing it to Beauty and the Beast 2017 and expecting $1B+. This was always a niche thing cause its success mostly relies on people who have physically attended a Wicked show on Broadway and became a fan whereas the Disney cartoons were watched by every kid on the globe who had a TV. I guess it's more comparable to Maleficent where it's a reimagined concept of a fairy tale and the box office results are shaping up to be similar. And The Wizard of Oz is heavily US-centric, it is what it is.

 

Barbie had Barbenheimer and is a more global brand and I'm not even gonna entertain the Avatar/Avengers comparisons

[Thuggin]

1 hour ago, Gaia said:

It's hilarious you're saying "arguing against common sense" yet you're arguing against...comparing it to movies with similar marketing budgets.

 

Let's breakdown some of the top broadway adapted musical movies so you can see how Wicked "outperforming" is not, in any capacity, unexpected.

 

 

Production Budget / Gross / Multiplier:

 

Wicked - $150M / $650M (Est.) /  4-4.5x

Les Miserables - $61M / $443M / 7.3x

Mamma Mia - $55M / $611M / 11.1x

Chicago - 45M / 307M / 6.8x

La La Land - $30M / $509M / 17x

Grease - $6M / $396 / 66x

 

 

So lets rearrange based on amount grossed compared to production budget:

 

1. Grease - 66x

2. La La Land - 17x

3. Mamma Mia - 11.1x

4. Les Miserables - 7.3x

5. Chicago - 6.8x

6. Wicked 4.5x (giving best scenario)

 

 

 

This isn't even accounting for the fact that Wicked has had essentially a bigger marketing campaign than the rest of them combined and is up there with Marvel movies.

 

 

Marketing Budgets / Final Gross:

 

Wicked - $150M / $650M

Barbie - $150M / 1,447M

Avengers: Infinity War - $150M / $2,052M

Avengers: End Game - $200M / $2,799M

Avatar: TWOW - $200M / $2,320

 

 

So again, why are we supposed to be impressed with its numbers or find it a smash when it's hard so much poured into making it a success? Is it a Flop? No. Obviously. But this "huge smash!" thing Ari stans have going on is just not true. It did well, but is not by any means some gigantic smash.

 

 

 

 

 

Wicked was in no scenario ever going to gross 10x+ its budget the ****?  You're comparing it to much lower budget films.

 

And then to compare it to Avatar movies?  So I guess some of the biggest albums of this year didn't do that well because they didn't come close to making the profit Thriller did right? You guys are not serious. A more apt comparison is something like the Dune movie. And even then, not really because that was a sequel but at least it makes a little more sense. Also, it's not true that $650M is the highest it can gross. Anywhere from $700M-$750M is still in the cards, given we're approaching holiday breaks and awards season plus it's yet to release in Japan.

 

For a nearly three hour adaptation of a Broadway musical, the film did very well and the marketing clearly paid off because without marketing hype people would have only been predicting maybe a fraction of the box office it will gross now. Additionally, merchandise sales from the marketing campaign will pay Universal too! That part is conveniently being left out. Positive WOM and strong legs shows promise for streaming and the second movie too, which was filmed with the first and won't require as much marketing to make it known either. Universal is making a lot of profit off of this; I can assure you you don't need to be worried about their profit margins.

[Eternium]

5 hours ago, Gaia said:

Marketing isn't the full picture.

 

https://deadline.com/2024/11/wicked-marketing-record-advertiser-list-1236187221/

 

This movie has been quite literally everywhere. You cannot live in the US and essentially not see promo for this movie in grocery stores, at restaurants, etc. and while not all of it may have been a part of "marketing" budget since they may not have "paid" for it per se, it absolutely does go into the perception of its performance. 

 

It near doubled the promotional push of Avengers Endgame and Infinity War and did double the push for Avatar: TWOTW. 

 

People saying "Oh this did unprecedentedly well for a musical!" like no ****, it got even more promo than massively anticipated Avenger/Avatar movies. Musical or not, grossing 650-700M despite more push than 2B boxoffice movies is not a flex.

Girl, I love you, but you didn't read that article at all. The $350M promo push is all GRATIS for merchandise. It means that these places are doing promo pushes on their dollar to sell merchandise, which is not unusual. You are then taking that free media and comparing it to studio budget spend.

 

Actual studio promotional pushes (known as "Print & Ads):"

Avatar: The Way of Water - $175M

Barbie - $175M

Endgame - $155M

Infinity War - $150M

Wicked - $150M (estimated per your own article)

 

There isn't a chance in hell that Barbie, Marvel and Avatar have spent less than $350M on merchandise advertising. They do more than that even when they don't have films to promote  

4 hours ago, eclipsed said:

Universal probably was thinking it would do more, I did kinda expect it to cross 1b since its the biggest marketing campaign since Barbie. Internationally is where it was let down. I guess it being a musical and the steep runtime stopped it from pulling 1b nonethess they made their money back and a couple 100m more plus its a huge awards contender

 

Thing is most of these had way smaller budgets so they actually turned more of a profit especially ASIB and La La Land maybe The Greatest Showman also.

You all have no grasp of what really goes on behind the scenes. Studio spend for the entirety of Wicked right now is $700M (that's both films). 
 

La La Land's profit was $68.25M. The Greatest Showman's profit was less than $50M. ASIB's profit was $178.1M.

 

Numbers are of course higher when you add in merchandise and soundtracks, but Wicked absolutely destroys all three of these films by a mile. 

4 hours ago, OrbitNumber1 said:

It's not an underperformance by any means, but it's surprising that it didn't make bigger numbers since the marketing campaign was so huge. Universal probably expected it to be this year's Barbie. I wonder what this means for the sequel since they will lower their expectations on international markets, I believe it will have a smaller campaign.

The campaign was already set. The highest grossing Broadway musical adaptation in the U.S. was Grease which held the record for 46 years and Mamma Mia was the highest grossing Broadway musical adaptation globally for 16 years. Wicked has overtaken both titles despite being two hours and 40 minutes, and its merchandise sales are out of this world. Why would they be disappointed?  

2 hours ago, Maneater said:

How is it doing in the UK?

Back at #2 (behind Sonic 3) with $875k. It blocked Moana 2  

 

[Scandalous]

how predictable that the only negative comments in here are from bitter fans of the "Get Happy (2024)" singer 

[UnusualBoy]

It was never expected to gross one billion, everybody had it at 600-700m which is on par with its total gross will look like.

[OrbitNumber1]

23 minutes ago, Thuggin said:

Wicked was in no scenario ever going to gross 10x+ its budget the ****?  You're comparing it to much lower budget films.

 

And then to compare it to Avatar movies?  So I guess some of the biggest albums of this year didn't do that well because they didn't come close to making the profit Thriller did right? You guys are not serious. A more apt comparison is something like the Dune movie. And even then, not really because that was a sequel but at least it makes a little more sense. Also, it's not true that $650M is the highest it can gross. Anywhere from $700M-$750M is still in the cards, given we're approaching holiday breaks and awards season plus it's yet to release in Japan.

 

For a nearly three hour adaptation of a Broadway musical, the film did very well and the marketing clearly paid off because without marketing hype people would have only been predicting maybe a fraction of the box office it will gross now. Additionally, merchandise sales from the marketing campaign will pay Universal too! That part is conveniently being left out. Positive WOM and strong legs shows promise for streaming and the second movie too, which was filmed with the first and won't require as much marketing to make it known either. Universal is making a lot of profit off of this; I can assure you you don't need to be worried about their profit margins.

The other Ariana stans when saying that "we should compare it to other musicals" and when someone does you say "no, don't do that"? 

And then proceeds to say we shouldn't compare it to action blockbusters either. What should we compare the movie to then?

 

3 minutes ago, Eternium said:

The campaign was already set. The highest grossing Broadway musical adaptation in the U.S. was Grease which held the record for 46 years and Mamma Mia was the highest grossing Broadway musical adaptation globally for 16 years. Wicked has overtaken both titles despite being two hours and 40 minutes, and its merchandise sales are out of this world. Why would they be disappointed?  

 

Grease is literally a movie from the 70s with a much smaller budget, Mamma Mia is 16 years old, from a time movies just didn't hit 1B they hardly beat 500M. Why would pour $150M into a movie if you expected it to make it around Grease's ~400M??? 

Is Wicked this much of a singularity in the history of cinema that a studio spends blockbuster numbers in its marketing and production expecting to have the numbers of a 1978 movie? 

[Eternium]

1 hour ago, Gaia said:

It's hilarious you're saying "arguing against common sense" yet you're arguing against...comparing it to movies with similar marketing budgets.

 

Let's breakdown some of the top broadway adapted musical movies so you can see how Wicked "outperforming" is not, in any capacity, unexpected.

 

 

Production Budget / Gross / Multiplier:

 

Wicked - $150M / $650M (Est.) /  4-4.5x

Les Miserables - $61M / $443M / 7.3x

Mamma Mia - $55M / $611M / 11.1x

Chicago - 45M / 307M / 6.8x

La La Land - $30M / $509M / 17x

Grease - $6M / $396 / 66x

 

 

So lets rearrange based on amount grossed compared to production budget:

 

1. Grease - 66x

2. La La Land - 17x

3. Mamma Mia - 11.1x

4. Les Miserables - 7.3x

5. Chicago - 6.8x

6. Wicked 4.5x (giving best scenario)

 

 

 

This isn't even accounting for the fact that Wicked has had essentially a bigger marketing campaign than the rest of them combined and is up there with Marvel movies.

 

 

Marketing Budgets / Final Gross:

 

Wicked - $150M / $650M

Barbie - $150M / 1,447M

Avengers: Infinity War - $150M / $2,052M

Avengers: End Game - $200M / $2,799M

Avatar: TWOW - $200M / $2,320

 

 

So again, why are we supposed to be impressed with its numbers or find it a smash when it's hard so much poured into making it a success? Is it a Flop? No. Obviously. But this "huge smash!" thing Ari stans have going on is just not true. It did well, but is not by any means some gigantic smash.

 

 

 

 

 

I love my fellow MY/SONE, but you might be the least educated member here on how box office works. QUIT COMPARING PRODUCTION BUDGETS AND IGNORING PRINT AND ADS!

 

Just throw your whole post away. La La Land had a production budget of $30M, but the studio spent a total of $143.75M. You have overheads, participations, print & ads, interest, etc. that studios purposefully hide from production budgets. It's useless to respond to the rest of your post since you don't understand film budgets, but here goes nothing anyway.

 

Marvel spent $775M on Infinity War. Marvel spent $899M on Endgame. Disney spent $1.087 billion on The Way of Water. Barbie cost $588M. 

Both Wicked movies cost $700M for Universal total. The first Wicked movie will gross almost $500M domestically and $250M foreign (that's $350M for the studio). Then you bring in streaming and TV rights (ASIB got $130M so expect similar for each Wicked movie). Then you have VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray, which will be $100M.
 

So for a $700M spend from Universal for two Wicked films, Universal is going to make $580M just from the first film without adding in merchandising and soundtracks. The second film will bring in at least $230M just from home entertainment and streaming rights like the first. There will be a profit of at least $110M even without adding in merchandising, soundtracks and the theatrical gross of the second film. That is ******* massive and in no way an underperformance no matter how you try to twist it.

 

[Peroxide]

2 hours ago, Maneater said:

How is it doing in the UK?

Smashing hard over here.

 

English speaking territories have really embraced Wicked… shame about its performance outside of the Anglosphere but it's still doing really well.

 

I think anything north of $700M would cement this movie being a smash.

[Thuggin]

8 minutes ago, OrbitNumber1 said:

The other Ariana stans when saying that "we should compare it to other musicals" and when someone does you say "no, don't do that"? 

And then proceeds to say we shouldn't compare it to action blockbusters either. What should we compare the movie to then?

 

Grease is literally a movie from the 70s with a much smaller budget, Mamma Mia is 16 years old, from a time movies just didn't hit 1B they hardly beat 500M. Why would pour $150M into a movie if you expected it to make it around Grease's ~400M??? 

Is Wicked this much of a singularity in the history of cinema that a studio spends blockbuster numbers in its marketing and production expecting to have the numbers of a 1978 movie? 

When we compare it to other Broadway adaptations, it will be the highest grossing of all time and rake in the most profit. I don't think the studio cares about the multiplier as much as they do the pure profit margin.  Yes, they did spend a lot more money than your average stage musical film, and it also paid off. They could have spent $300M on marketing for all I care. It was never going to do $1.5B+ at the box office. Where the musical was actually known (English speaking countries), the movie smashed. It will probably end up around top 30s/20s grossing movie of all time in the US. And that's before we get to a rerelease / double feature with the second film. Where the musical wasn't known, no one saw it in the first place to give it good WOM to carry it. And again, they spent a lot on this movie knowing they would only have the one time production costs for both movies and then the second which would need a lot less marketing.

[Eternium]

3 minutes ago, OrbitNumber1 said:

The other Ariana stans when saying that "we should compare it to other musicals" and when someone does you say "no, don't do that"? 

And then proceeds to say we shouldn't compare it to action blockbusters either. What should we compare the movie to then?

 

Grease is literally a movie from the 70s with a much smaller budget, Mamma Mia is 16 years old, from a time movies just didn't hit 1B they hardly beat 500M. Why would pour $150M into a movie if you expected it to make it around Grease's ~400M??? 

Is Wicked this much of a singularity in the history of cinema that a studio spends blockbuster numbers in its marketing and production expecting to have the numbers of a 1978 movie? 

Let me correct myself: you might actually be less educated on box office than Gaia.

 

I can't tell if you're pretending to have poor reading comprehension skills as an excuse to act obtuse or if you're actually struggling to understand what an anomaly Wicked is, but it's the 57th highest-grossing film ever in the U.S. and it just did $3.7M yesterday with Christmas and New Year's still to come. It is a 2 hour and 40 minute, black-lead, female-lead, Broadway musical adaptation and it is destroying records that have stood for decades despite tons of competition from Moana 2, Mufasa and Sonic 3. It is an anomaly.

 

Also, would love to see you post the top grossing films of 2008. You claimed no movie made $1B and films struggled to make $500M, right? 2008 had just as many $600M grossing films as 2024 will have  

[Chris]

[Eternium]

11 hours ago, bjorn said:

Grosses

 

DOMESTIC (69%)
$370,415,875

 

INTERNATIONAL (31%)
$166,143,000

 

WORLDWIDE
$536,558,875

 

It looks like it will finish its run around $600M? That's far from the 1B prediction a lot were having. 

Let's go ahead and update this, sis. Wicked grossed $3.72M domestically on Friday and stands at $374.14M now.

 

The international total is only updated through 12/15 so that needs to be noted, too. International will jump above $180M when it updates again on Sunday, 12/23.

[Mikeymoonshine]

1 hour ago, OrbitNumber1 said:

The other Ariana stans when saying that "we should compare it to other musicals" and when someone does you say "no, don't do that"? 

And then proceeds to say we shouldn't compare it to action blockbusters either. What should we compare the movie to then?

 

Grease is literally a movie from the 70s with a much smaller budget, Mamma Mia is 16 years old, from a time movies just didn't hit 1B they hardly beat 500M. Why would pour $150M into a movie if you expected it to make it around Grease's ~400M??? 

Is Wicked this much of a singularity in the history of cinema that a studio spends blockbuster numbers in its marketing and production expecting to have the numbers of a 1978 movie? 

A comparison that calls Wicked a flop/underperformance if it doesn't do 1.5 billion at the BO is clearly nonsensical. That's what 10 times it's production budget would be and only one movie musical has ever cleared that hurdle. Disneys 2019 lion King movie, only Disney has ever even cleared a billion with a musical and no Broadway adaptation has done it.

 

Greese is a hugely successful movie even by today's standards. Comparing it to that is a lot less ridiculous than expecting it to do numbers no broadway musical adaptation has ever even come close to. 

[Caltrask]

6 hours ago, Renem said:

What country is that, China?

France. 
 

Even Conclave (which was released on the same day here) performed better

[OrgVisual]

4 hours ago, Peroxide said:

Smashing hard over here.

 

English speaking territories have really embraced Wicked… shame about its performance outside of the Anglosphere but it's still doing really well.

 

I think anything north of $700M would cement this movie being a smash.

I mean, half of the movies plot is carried through the lyrics of the musical. It's not the same when it's being dubbed / voiceover in other languages 

[Lightbringer007]

its literally smashing what-

[Communion]

The whole thread being insane people googling and ChatGPTing concepts they've never heard of before to try and attack Wicked only for @Eternium to have to come in and go "WHAT are some of y'all actually talking about?? That's not how NONE of this works??" nkjn 

 

Someone earnestly expecting Wicked to make *re-reads* 66x its budget aka $19b?? 

 

Edit - Shoutout to @lustforyou's commentary as well. 

Edited 16 hours ago by Communion

[Communion]

13 hours ago, ICLDXU4HS said:

If anything, it should be compared to Disney's musical live-action adaptations with human leads (Aladdin, The Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid) instead of those musical dramas for adults with heavy themes. They're all fantasy movies/fairytales with singing and mostly for children.

Girly I love you but Wicked is literally the story of a left-wing activist rebuking institutions of political power + liberal electoralism and deciding to take-up acts of domestic terrorism to try and fight a military dictatorship and stop their genocidal plan that sees them performing medical experiments on a minority population within the land of Oz, all while overflowing with immense sapphic and homoerotic sexual tension. 

 

(Basically there was not a single person under the age of 18 or who wasn't a millennial woman / homosexual in the theater when I saw it ddd)

Edited 16 hours ago by Communion

[Gerardo]

People here bringing up box office numbers from Grease (1978 movie) to convince themselves that Wicked is a bomb 

[Jude]

Some of you are clueless about boxoffice and it shows.

 

Ever heard of the 2.5 x PB = breakeven? Yes, Wicked part 1 has already done that so now it's just making profits. And who said it's finishing at $600M lmao. It's still on track to surpass $700M.

[dawnettakins]

I mean lowkey it's kinda local but still a big hit regardless, especially where it smashed like the US.

 

It did pretty well for itself and for how a typical musical would perform and could realistically achieve. It definitely made more than enough for its budget and the studio to make money on it.

 

Not to mention it's been everywhere and hyped up to the max here in the US. Can't even go to a store without seeing something promoting it lmao 

Edited 15 hours ago by dawnettakins

[bjorn]

17 minutes ago, Jude said:

Some of you are clueless about boxoffice and it shows.

 

Ever heard of the 2.5 x PB = breakeven? Yes, Wicked part 1 has already done that so now it's just making profits. And who said it's finishing at $600M lmao. It's still on track to surpass $700M.

With the extensive marketing campaign they had I was expecting it to do Barbie numbers. Internationally it did flop. It's doing great numbers in the US. And yes they're making profits which is good. But overall it does seem like an under performance based on how insanely promoted this movie was. But that's just my opinion. 

[OrgVisual]

34 minutes ago, bjorn said:

With the extensive marketing campaign they had I was expecting it to do Barbie numbers. Internationally it did flop. It's doing great numbers in the US. And yes they're making profits which is good. But overall it does seem like an under performance based on how insanely promoted this movie was. But that's just my opinion. 

Y'll talk like Barbie is not a once-in-a-lifetime kind of success. You can't just expect any movies to have the same kind of success as the 14th highest grossing movie of all-time.

 

And just because sth is highly promoted doesn't mean the expectation is that it could be one of the highest grossing movies of all time. And which blockbuster is not highly promoted anyways? Such a dumb argument

[mxoonlight]

Look at how you guys eat when you're focused omg