Universal Pictures’ “Wicked: For Good” is now in cinemas and already shattering records.
The title’s Thursday night preview haul hit an astonishing $30.8 million, the tenth biggest domestic box office preview gross of all time – behind only the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, multiple Marvel titles, and the final “Harry Potter”.
It’s easily the biggest preview number of the year and has revised estimates for the film’s domestic opening weekend upward to $150 million. If it hits that mark, it’ll be the second-highest opening of the year between “A Minecraft Movie” ($164 million) and “Lilo and Stitch” ($146 million).
The film is also looking to have the second-highest opening weekend for a Universal film domestically behind only “Jurassic World” ($208.8m) and the second-highest pre-Thanksgiving weekend debut behind only “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” ($158m).
The film has also begun opening in international territories, with its Wednesday-Thursday haul being $14.9 million. In Australia, it had the second biggest opening day of the year in the market behind “Superman”.
The news comes as the original musical’s creator Stephen Schwartz tells The Ankler he’s working on a spin-off idea – “not a sequel, but an adjunct. Let me put it that way” but adds that the “Glinda and Elphaba story feels complete” and so it wouldn’t focus on them.
