Essential

Now, you are NAWT gonna do Miss Twice & Co. like this. Especially when the bar is L*tus. Although her most surprising output from the 10's to me will continue to be Shotgun.

Those amounts, plus over $100 million each for advertising would for sure require like $400 million in box office alone for each movie to break even in the theatrical window. Looking at live action musicals that made as much in the past few years: A Star Is Born and The Greatest Showman, while you have major flops like Cats, In The Heights and West Side Story. It's truly a toss up, but they seem to have a lot of faith in it, since they approved that much money and two movies instead of one. To your point, though, Wicked is very much a successful.mp3 property and it's a proven box office smash on stage, so now it just has to prove itself on the big screen, and it doesn't have to go face to face against two family friendly films, one which happens to be part of the biggest saga in the world. I don't think it's possible for the first one to flop so terriblly that the second won't be released in theaters. Wicked and Ariana have huge fanbases that should avoid that, at least on opening weekend. It's the legs that would be worrisome, but holiday season has been very kind to family friendly movies since Star Wars and Jumanji populated them.

$300 million for each movie would for sure mean a significant loss for Universal, those movies need to make at least $800 million combined to turn ~some profit. Only looking at the set design, the wardrobe and how much time is going to be needed for post production (i.e. VFX), Universal is putting MONEY on this movie, we better secure our tickets for our girlie. Can't wait, personally (although I selfishly want a new album before Thanksgiving 2024).

It's clearly this one:

Ariana is also a SAG nominee

She looks like she's pushing thirty, oh wait...

Bionic (only aesthestically) for the worst

I'm most likely biased being from Latin America, but Shakira feels inmensely bigger here than Beyoncé. Heck, probably bigger than anyone other than MJ and Madonna. Like, all of us have heard (willingly or not) at least one of her maybe 30 classics, and she's been in the business for so long that we know most of the things she's done or been through. Petty stuff like the Antonio De La Rúa and Gerard Piqué's breakups are now literally embedded in pop culture around here. However, I think the most similar data we have to measure "name recognition" globally would be the Google Trends posted a few pages back, even considering how flawed it is.

I just feel like she could've shelved one of those, they're too similar. Especially being one after the other in the tracklist.

The song is AMAZING

It's not streaming friendly and they dropped the ball with the singles. Like, half the songs are 5 minutes long which is almost unheard of in this day and age.

20/20 is literally skipless in my book, and the album version of Mirrors is just chef's kiss. However, Christina's commitment to B2B was unparalleled, and I think it just hits some of her highest higs, while the less memorable parts of the album are just meh (looking at you, Without You/On Our Way). I mean, Understand, Makes Me Wanna Pray, Slow Down Baby, Still Dirrty, Ain't No Other Man, Hurt, Candyman, Save Me From Myself, I Got Trouble and Mercy On Me are 10 undeniable bangers. I didn't connect with 4, and while I find Love On Top to be a fun song, it isn't enough (for me) to lift enough the rest of the album. Especially when she easily topped it with BEYONCÉ. tldr: B2B and Hurt slightly over Mirrors.

This stage has never been gayer. What do y'all think? Did you like it? What was your reaction at the time?

We need Welcome Back 2 Burlesque in 2026, I'll keep saying it.