In yet another edition of Hollywood’s ongoing “it’s so over/we’re so back” debate, Wicked: For Good landed on the side of “we’re so back.” For Good dominated the weekend box office, earning $147 million, the second-highest opening weekend of the year and topping the first film’s $112 million. Carrying over the $76 million from international sales, the epic conclusion of the Wicked saga grossed more than $223 million. From a strictly financial perspective, splitting Wicked into two parts, allowing audiences to fall in love with the first half while essentially being tricked into the second, was a good idea
Wicked: For Good is good for the whole family, and that appeal had a disastrous impact on the rest of the top 10. Even with a significantly lesser soundtrack, Wicked outperformed the competition with ease. Last week’s number one, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, couldn’t even abracadabra its way to $10 million with that pesky witch flying around doing real magic. Clearly out of breath, The Running Man moved more slowly than the other Schwarzenegger-adjacent 80s reboot, Predator: Badlands, which leapfrogged Edgar Wright’s adaptation. Rounding out the top five, the Brendan Fraser family dramedy, Rental Family, scrounged $3 million from the side of the Yellow Brick Road. Riding a decidedly different and more violent road, the SISU sequel, Road To Revenge, whimpered with $2.2 million in 2,222 theaters at number six.
Other releases still hanging out in the top 10 include Regretting You and Black Phone 2. (As we’ve noted before, people can’t get enough of Mason Thames.) Yet, also in the horror realm, Osgood Perkins’ Keeper is proving to be a “dark trip” audiences do not want to take. Now in its second week, Keeper landed at number 11 with a thud, er, $628,000, bringing its total to $3.9 million, a disappointing figure for Neon. The studio relied on cryptic, gimmicky advertising to turn low-budget, offbeat horror movies Longlegs and The Monkey into box-office successes. But there’s been a steep drop off since Longlegs‘ $125 million global take. Its follow-up, The Monkey, brought in about half that. Now, Keeper is on track to earn less than Perkins’ Gretel & Hansel, which enticed audiences with a candy house before making $22 million in winter 2020 and stuffing the entire world into an oven.
Here’s the full top 10:
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- 1) Wicked: For Good ($147 million)
- 2) Now You See Me: Now You Don’t ($8.9 million)
- 3) Predator: Badlands ($6.5 million)
- 4) The Running Man ($5.7 million)
- 5) Rental Family ($3.3 million)
- 6) SISU: Road To Revenge ($2.4 million)
- 7) Regretting You ($1.5 million)
- 8) Nuremberg ($1.2 million)
- 9) Black Phone 2 ($1 million)
- 10) Sarah’s Oil ($801,000)
[via The Numbers]
