‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator’ make gravity-defying theater debuts
By Jake Coyle
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — With a combined $270 million in worldwide ticket sales, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” breathed fresh life into a box office that has struggled lately, leading to one of the busiest moviegoing weekends of the year.
Jon M. Chu’s lavish big-budget musical “Wicked,” starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, debuted with $114 million domestically and $164.2 million globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates Sunday. That made it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2.” It’s also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” a sequel to his 2000 best picture-winning original, launched with $55.5 million in ticket sales. With a price tag of around $250 million to produce it, “Gladiator II” was a big bet by Paramount Pictures to return to the Colosseum with a largely new cast, led by Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal. While it opened with a touch less than the $60 million predicted in domestic ticket sales, “Gladiator II” has performed well overseas. It added $50.5 million internationally.
The collision of the two movies led to some echoes of the “Barbenheimer” effect of last year, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched simultaneously. The nickname this time, “Glicked,” wasn’t quite as catchy and the cultural imprint also was notably less. Few people sought out a double feature this time. The domestic grosses in 2023 — $162 million for “Barbie” and $82 million for “Oppenheimer” — also were higher.
For Universal, which distributed “Oppenheimer” last year, the weekend was more a triumph of “Wicked” than it was of “Glicked.”
“We saw an opportunity to dominate a weekend and get a very large running start into the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “We’re very confident that it will play ridiculously well through the Christmas corridor and into the new year.”
But the counter-programming effect was still potent for “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” which likewise split broadly along gender lines. And it was again the female-leaning release — “Wicked,” like “Barbie” before it — that easily won the weekend. About 72% of ticket buyers for “Wicked” were female, while 61% of those seeing “Gladiator II” were male.
“Standing on their own, each of these movies may have done pretty much what they did, but it’s hard to know,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Raising awareness can indeed lead to an increase in box office. Let’s put it this way: They didn’t hurt each other at all.
Massive marketing campaigns paved the way for opening weekend
While “Barbenheimer” benefitted enormously from meme-spread word-of-mouth, both “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” leaned on all-out marketing blitzes.
The “Gladiator II” campaign featured everything from a much-debated Airbnb cross-promotion with the actual Colosseum in Rome to simultaneously running a one-minute trailer on more than 4,000 TV networks, radio station and digital platforms.
The “Wicked” onslaught went even further, with pink and green themed “Wickedly Delicious” Starbucks drinks, Stanley mugs and Mattel dolls (some of which led to an awkward recall ). Its stars made appearances at the Met Gala and the Olympics.
“We had roughly 400 global brand partners on ‘Wicked,’ so the campaign was inescapable, said Orr. “And our cast, led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, worked so hard on this. They were everywhere. They did everything we asked them to do.”
Going into the weekend, the box office was down about 11% from last year and some 25% from pre-pandemic times. That meant this week’s two headline films led a much-needed resurgence for theaters. With “Moana 2” releasing Wednesday, Hollywood might be looking at historic sales over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The two films boosted sluggish box office performance
“This weekend’s two strong openers are invigorating a box office that fell apart after a good summer,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment.
Though “Wicked” will face some direct competition from “Moana 2,” it would seem better set up for a long and lucrative run in theaters than “Gladiator II.” Though some have dinged “Wicked” for running long, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, the film has had mostly stellar reviews. Audiences gave it an “A” on CinemaScore. The reception for “Wicked” has been strong enough that Oscar prognosticators expect it to be a contender for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, among other categories.
Producers, perhaps sensing a hit, also took the step of splitting “Wicked” in two. Part two, already filmed, is due out next November. Each “Wicked” installation cost around $150 million to make.
“Gladiator II” has also enjoyed good reviews, particularly for Washington’s charismatic performance. Audience scores, though, were weaker, with ticket buyers giving it a “B” on CinemaScore. The film will make up for some of that, however, with robust international sales. It launched in many overseas markets a week ago, and has already accrued $165.5 million internationally.
Coming in a distant third place for the weekend was “Red One,” the Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans holiday movie turned action film. In its second week of release, the Amazon MGM Studios release grossed $13.3 million to bring its two-week global haul to $117 million. At a cost of $250 million to make, “Red One” is the season’s biggest flop, though it could recoup some value for Amazon if it’s more popular once it begins streaming.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
- “Wicked,” $114 million.
- “Gladiator II,” $55.5 million.
- “Red One,” $13.3 million.
- “Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin,” $5.1 million.
- “Venom: The Last Dance,” $4 million.
- “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.5 million.
- “Heretic,” $2.2 million.
- “The Wild Robot,” $2 million.
- “Smile 2,” $1.1 million.
- “A Real Pain,” $1.1 million.
Movie Review: The Washington family tells a ghost story in August Wilson’s ‘The Piano Lesson’
By Lindsey Bahr
ASSOCIATED PRESS
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.” Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington’s footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it’s second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson’s own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It’s not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with “Mudbound” screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson’s text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that’s central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family’s home. Another fleshes out Doaker’s monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher’s Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes narration shine as well.
Wilson purists will certainly have opinions on these artistic choices; But they let the film breathe a bit, offering some respite from the living room with the looming piano. And most of the film stays right there, in 1936. Boy Willie and Lymon descend early one morning, uninvited, on the Pittsburgh home of Berniece and her uncle Doaker. It’s a family reunion with an agenda: They’ve driven a truck full of watermelons up north from Mississippi, and Willie, Berniece’s younger brother, wants to sell the watermelons and then the piano. The dusty old instrument represents to him a chance to let the past go and start a future. With the money, he wants to buy the land that his enslaved ancestors worked.
Berniece has other ideas about the piano, namely keeping it. It’s a connection to the past, not an anchor. Besides, it might be haunted.
Yes, “The Piano Lesson,” in theaters Friday and streaming on Netflix on Nov. 22, isn’t just a meditation on family history. It’s also a literal ghost story, with creaks, spooks and shadows lurking when the piano is disturbed. Deadwyler is electric as Berniece, who bears the brunt of the haunting, walking on eggshells in her life, trying to care for her young daughter and fend off passes from men who assume she can only be fulfilled with one at her side. Now she must deal with her somewhat manic brother who might, Doaker wisely reminds, actually, annoyingly, have a point. Perhaps the film academy will make up for their snub of her performance in “Till” with this turn.
Regardless of your familiarity with Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, “The Piano Lesson” is a worthwhile, captivating and moving watch full of charismatic performers. Talent isn’t always genetic, but the Washington family is putting in the work to prove otherwise. And with “Fences,”“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and now “The Piano Lesson,” they’re making a mark with a bold and ambitious project that is probably long overdue. Only seven more to go.
“The Piano Lesson,” a Netflix release in theaters Friday and streaming Nov. 22, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “strong language, violent content, some suggestive references and smoking.” Running time: 125 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Review: Though earnest and visually dazzling, ‘Moana 2’ is more dull than so shiny
By Jake Coyle
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The warm Polynesian spirit and open-sea sense of adventure is back in “Moana 2,” but little of the original’s humor or catchy songs finds its way into this heartfelt but lackluster sequel set three years after the original.
“Moana 2,” which opens in theaters Wednesday, was originally put into development as a streaming series before it was rerouted to the big screen. Curiously, though, it’s not scale or spectacle lacking here. Directors David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller have made an often dazzlingly animated film that is, visually, a step up from 2016’s “Moana.”
But in a story that brings in a literal boatload of new characters, it’s hard to shake the feeling that “Moana 2” got caught in the crosswinds — too blown between shifting studio imperatives to really find its own way.
That’s a shame because the original “Moana” is about the lightest, most joyful animated movie Disney has made in a decade – with the possible exception of “Encanto,” which likewise bounced to the buoyant rhythms of songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Miranda is crucially absent in “Moana 2,” though “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail is currently developing a live-action “Moana.”)
Photorealistic remakes have been the more dominant providence of the Magic Kingdom in recent years, a trend that’s made more whimsical, imagination-filled animations like “Moana” all the more exceptional. Here was a movie that somehow balanced Pacific Island cultural authenticity with the cartoony delights of a demigod turned accidental shark and Jemaine Clement as a singing, flaunting giant crab. Talk about win-win.
Such inventiveness is harder to come by in the perfectly earnest but not especially inspired “Moana.” It opens with a visibly grown Moana (Auli’i Cravalho, returning) engaged in a search for evidence of Pacific Islanders beyond her home island. She is by now a mythic figure, herself, to her people, idolized by youngsters for her courage and for being “super-besties” with the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson, also back).
When Moana turns up an artifact with evidence of a two-peaked island, Motufetu, fabled as the once binding center of their ancestors, she sets out to find the cursed island and reunite the disparate people of Oceania. This time, though, Moana is sailing with a more crowded boat.
Some of the old sidekicks — the rooster Heihei (with noises courtesy of Alan Tudyk) and the pig Pua — are back. But Moana decides she needs human help this time, and brings along a crew featuring the uber Maui fan Moni (Hualālai Chung), the engineer Loto (Rose Matefeo) and the curmudgeonly older farmer Kele (David Fane).
Each of these characters has one generic note to play, and while you could see the need to add in more personalities for a series (Moana also now has a cute little sister, voiced by Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda), they are effectively dead weight in “Moana 2.”
To me, the iconic image of these films is Moana as a solo adventurer, leaning against the wind in her camakau and setting an unknown course. Sure, Maui is inevitably her buddy-comedy partner in adventure, but Moana and her canoe should permit passengers no more than John Wayne did on his horse.
After an encounter with the coconut brigade of the Kakamora, Moana and Maui eventually reunite via a giant clam, where Maui has been trapped by Matangai (Awhimai Fraser, having fun), a mysterious, bat-adorned figure who’s a kind of villain for the movie. She’s more interesting than some recent Disney antagonists and gets probably the best song (“Get Lost”) in a movie that mightily misses Miranda’s touch. (The songs are by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear.)
That scene and the climactic one, with a sea of tornadoes spinning across stormy waters, are vividly drawn — enough, surely, to delight younger moviegoers. Coming fast on the heels of “Wicked,” one of the most salient selling points of “Moana 2” may be its comparatively nimble running time. At 100 minutes, it’s a full hour shorter than “Wicked.”
Ironically, “Moana 2” — beefed up from a would-be series — has brevity in its favor. But the hopes for “Moana 2” should go beyond mere placeholder. Only a few times does the banter between Moana and Maui really remind you of the fun that characterized the original. In one such moment, Moana corrects Maui after he calls her — perhaps confusing Moana for many other Disney protagonists — a princess. His comeback? “Well, a lot of people think you are.”
“Moana 2,” a Walt Disney Co. release is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action/peril. Running time: 100 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Movie Review: ‘Red One’ tries to supersize the Christmas movie
By Jake Coyle
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ah, the Christmas movie. That old chestnut. That cozy perennial pastime where — let’s just pick one scene from “Red One” — Dwayne Johnson, playing Santa’s body guard, faces off with a witch-possessed mercenary (Nick Kroll) and ice-sword-wielding CGI snowmen on the sandy beaches of Aruba. Can’t you just taste the eggnog?
Such are the ugly-sweater clashes of “Red One,” a big-budget gambit to supersize the Christmas movie. Countless movies before have wrestled with who Santa is. Does he really exist? But “Red One” is the first one to answer doubters with a superhero-like St. Nick who runs his North Pole operation like the army, who bench presses and counts carbs and who, given that he’s played by J.K. Simmons, looks like he could teach one heck of a jazz class.
There is ample time during “Red One,” which opens in theaters Thursday, to ponder who, exactly, put a Marvel-ized Santa on their wish list. The movie, directed by the “Jumanji” reboot filmmaker Jake Kasdan and scripted by the veteran “Fast & Furious” screenwriter Chris Morgan, was conceived by producer Hiram Garcia as the start of a holiday franchise for Amazon MGM Studios — presumably to satisfy those who have pined for a Christmas movie but with, you, know, more military industrial complex.
“Red One,” which is brightened by its other A-list star, Chris Evans, is a little self-aware about its own inherent silliness. But not nearly enough. There is a better, funnier movie underneath all the CGI gloss. But overwhelmed by effects and overelaborate world building (there are trolls, ogres and a headless horsemen here, all loosely connected as mythical creatures), “Red One” feels like an unwanted high-priced Christmas present.
“I love the kids. It’s the grown-ups that are killing me.”
So announces Callum Drift (Johnson), a long-serving security operative for Santa. He’s not an elf but a member of ELF, Enforcement Logistics and Fortification. (Don’t you just feel the holiday cheer welling up inside?) But after years, even centuries on the job, Callum’s faith in Christmas traditions is waning. For the first time, those on the naughty list outnumber the nice. On a mall visit two days before Christmas, he looks despondently at adults bickering over presents, if not outright stealing them.
Callum and other operatives with earpieces shuttle Santa (“Red One” in their secret service-styled lingo) in a fleet of Suburbans to his sleigh, which, while pulled by reindeer, moves more like a spaceship. Back at the North Pole — picture a sort of wintery Abu Dhabi — Santa is kidnapped. The culprits leave only spilt milk behind. The ensuing hunt, overseen by the chief of a special ops group protecting mystical beings (Lucy Liu), leads immediately to a hacker who helped an anonymous client geolocate Santa.
The for-hire hacker, Jack O’Malley (Evans) is a deadbeat dad to his son (Wesley Kimmel), and, we’re informed, a “level-four naughty-lister.” Evans might be most famous for his Captain America, but smarmy smart-aleck (like in “Knives Out”) is really his wheelhouse. And he gives “Red One” some comic energy as it transitions into a sort of buddy comedy with him and Johnson.
But “Red One” keeps overdoing it. As they race to rescue Santa before Christmas Eve, the hunt brings in the villainous Christmas Witch, Gryla (Kiernan Shipka) and Krampus (Kristofer Hivju), here defined as Santa’s brother. The sensation, with these characters and others, is of stuffing too much into an already gaudy stocking, and yet somehow forgetting to add any charm.
“Red One” comes off a little like the holiday version of “Cowboys and Aliens” — enough so to make you nostalgic for leaner tales about folkloric figures starring Johnson, like “The Tooth Fairy.” But if we’re to have every possible brand of Christmas movie, it seems a shame that when the phrase “The North Pole has been taken!” Gerard Butler is nowhere to be seen.
“Red One,” an Amazon MGM Studios release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for action, some violence, and language. Running time: 133 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
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