WICKED: FOR GOOD Takes Flight At Box Office, Breaks Own Record

@Batmangina - Being accurate is offensive

@ModHaterSLADE - And I'm looking forward to seeing what Chu does next.

@ModHaterSLADE - Makes Chu of us.

@Nolanite - Here's looking at Chu, Nolanite.

@Feralwookiee -

@SpiderParker -

"Minecraft flourished with $1 Billion BO? Need I remind you that there were 9 movies that crossed $1B mark in 2019?"

You don't need to remind me that box office is down generally. We've established that. However Superman did not make a billion. See my point yet? No? Never mind, you don't want to so all this is falling on deaf ears.

"You love CBMs only."
Not true.

"There's no more FOMO now"
There's wicked FOMO right now.
(just not for cbms. People are now quite happy to miss them entirely)

"Even the bad movies were doing great at BO but now you can't be bad."
Tell that to Minecraft.

"But even if you are great, there's still no guarantee of doing good at BO."
There never was. The best movies flop. The worst movies top the box office. That's been the rule of thumb for generations.

"Superman is still the 8th highest grossing movie of the year"
For the biggest cbm of the year that's a massive drop. And like you keep saying yourself, movies are down in general so that's even worse because there's a much bigger divide between this and the top 2 or 3.

"You are too close to this."

I'm not the one clinging desperately to the overall lower box office as being an excuse for cbms to be doing far worse than the movies that actually are successful.
You keep telling me that all movies are down but don't seem to understand how that is a level playing field and therefore makes no relative difference.

I don't know why I'm even bothering. There are none so blind as those who don't want to see.

@SpiderParker - If I was thinking with my heart I'd be pretending that cbms weren't struggling. Like you.

You're saying that it's not a level playing field because of kids movies doing well? But kids movies always do well even in a healthy market. You even say as much yourself. So it's still the same.

Wicked will likely gross as much as or even more than Lilo & Stitch. You'll say that's because it's culturally significant. Thing is MCU movies used to be culturally significant.

Endgame got more repeat viewings than Lion King and Frozen 2 in 2019.
Spider-Man: Far From Home, Captain Marvel and Joker got more than Toy Story 4, Aladdin and Jumanji that same year.

Now movies in 2019 made more generally than in 2025, you don't have to tell me that for the 55th time, I understood the first time you said it. But cbms were still more popular than kids films, despite the difference in their collective grosses.

It is a level playing field.
All the reasons you're putting forth for why kids movies are successful today is also why they were successful yesterday.
So why aren't cbms popular today like they were yesterday?
(You're just gonna repeat that the box office on all films is down aren't you?*sigh*)

@SpiderParker - Okay I get it. You're saying that people will only go out for kids movies these days because of streaming. But they don't.
Over the last few years some cbms (including very adult movies like DS-MOM, The Batman and Deadpool & Wolverine) Top Gun etc have made all the money. Barbie was PG-13 and Oppenheimer was not a kids movie.
NWH was the biggest movie of 2021.
In 2022 Avatar, Top Gun, Jurassic World and Doctor Strange all made more money than Minions: The Rise of Gru.
Super Mario Bros was the only PG movie in the top 5 in 2023 and was beaten by the PG-13 Barbie.
Deadpool & Wolverine (an R-rated movie) and Wicked (PG-13) were in the top 5 last year, with D&W making more than Moana 2, Despicable Me 4 and Mustafa: The Lion King.
The numbers simply don't support this. Unless you're saying that this has only just happened this year, then the evidence doesn't back you up.

Also, yes it is level playing field. Saying that streaming and 90 day windows has affected movies makes it a different playing field than before, but it is still a level playing field because it has affected all movies, not just cbms. They have all equally been affected.

There's been a drop in box office for all movies for these reasons. But there has been a bigger drop for cbms which must mean that there is further reason, particular to cbms for that increased drop.

Everyone's getting less. Why?
Well streaming and covid.

CBMs are no longer on the top in the ranking. Why?
Not because of streaming and covid.

"But again you will just go on to say CBMs would be worth even less and lose my point once again."
Yes, funny that isn't it? I wonder if that means I'm right and you're just deluding yourself.

@ObserverIO - Wicked is PG.

Top Gun 2 and Avatar 2 were culturally significant. Avatar 2 certainly didn't beat it's record from 15years ago. In fact, its gross of $2.3B would have been approximately $1.6B of 2009 and hence just a little more than half the gross of first movie. Top Gun on the other hand came out in 1986, do I need to say more?

The Batman was 7th highest grossing movie of 2022, Superman is 8th. It made only $150m more than Superman. In context, $770m would be around $600m in 2012, the year when TDKR made almost double of that.

Jurrasic World Dominion (2022) made barely $1b which would be equal to $800m of 2015, the year when Jurrasic World (2015) made double of that with $1.67B.

Barbie and Oppenheimer or Barbenheimer as they were known were culturally significant and were a trend so the FOMO was high.

We've already discussed how D&W and NWH were culturally significant as everyone already knows why they made such money.

DS:MOM was also culturally significant but ultimately didn't perform as well as any of the other movies on this list have done with their respective "gimmicks".

Ultimately, without a trick up its sleeve, the movies fail even with a trick, they still aren't as successful as before covid.

So, the evidence does back me up. The numbers do support this. Ultimately, you are saying that CBM is suffering more than others but here you give me a list of 9 movies (not counting the PG movie) out of which 4 of them were CBMs. How does one genre have 4 movies in a list of extraordinary performance when your whole argument is against that? Are you in fact accepting that these movies only did good because of certain factors? Isn't that the same for every movie out of those 9?

The only movie that doesn't have that factor are the PG movies which is why I told you to exclude that. They are doing good purely because its a family time. Others have to rely on something or the other. I'm not the one deluding himself that any of these movies did good based on their merit only.

As for Wicked 2 and Avatar 3, if they don't beat their previous movies (and since both their previous movies were postcovid, it should be easy, right?), they are failing harder. Which you already seem to have accepted since you seem to doubt if Avatar 3 will beat Ne Zha 2.

By the way, you may think its a excuse calling all movies failing as a defense to CBM but opposite can also be true. Except, I'm actually relying on data and considering people's sentiments not personal feelings.

As we have talked before about this, CBMs were barely keeping BO alive after covid but after the backlash and toxicity from people who got too comfortable to watch these at home, they have driven others towards the same mentality and hence affected the whole movie industry. There's no certainty about most movies now, even you seem uncertain about Avatar 3. Even tricks may not be enough to pull them back in and its not just CBMs. CBMs were the one thing that could have stopped this but now its too late.

Movie industry will never get to be the same. Only a handful will perform good while others will struggle to recover money, slowly studios will pivot. Just look at the amount of mergers that are happening to keep the boat afloat. In the end the people who helped kill the whole industry are the ones who were too busy firing shots at CBMs for every little thing but didn't realize how it was affecting every single thing. Like you.

@SpiderParker - And there it is. You feel (thinking with your heart) that I'm bad-mouthing cbms to their detriment. I'm adding to the tornado. Which in turn will fuel the forest fire.

But I'm actually just pointing out that cbms had a disastrous year. Facts not feelings. I'm not happy about it. I'm typing this on a comic book movie website, why would I be happy about it?

Peopel have been talking about superhero movie fatigue for years but I haven't agreed with them until this year. Cbms have done worse in recent years but we have still had at least one or even two monster hits. But not this year.
And yeah The Batman only made $150 more than Superman ("only") but Superman just about broke even. It scraped to the finish line by the skin of it's pants. And there's a world of difference between it and recent cbms like NWH, DS MOM, D&W and yet Superman was the biggest cbm this year.

You say that recent cbms and other non-PG movies were big hits because they were culturally significant.

Do you know what that means? That means that none of the cbms this year were culturally significant.
Not even Superman, Fantastic Four, a movie that was named Captain America and a movie that was renamed The New Avengers!

@SpiderParker - Kinda like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hear ya.

But if Spider-Man: Brave New Doomsday flops I'm going full Rorschach.