Is “Wicked: For Good” shaping up to be one of the biggest hits of 2025? It certainly got off to a good start.
Before it has officially opened on Friday, “Wicked: For Good” has already made $30.8 million at the box office from advanced screenings. That’s higher than the previous high mark from 2025, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which made $24.4 million in previews, and also better than the $19.2 million the first “Wicked” made before it went on to an opening of $112.5 million.
$30.8 million would also put it just inside the Top 10 ever for a preview total, just ahead of “The Dark Knight Rises” way back in 2012. But now it’s time for asterisks!
That $30.8 million is the combined total of screenings on three different days this week, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. “Wicked: For Good” will open on 4,115 North American screens this weekend, but it may as well have “opened” as far back as Monday.
To break it down, “Wicked: For Good” made:
- $6.1 million on Monday as part of screenings for Amazon Prime members from 1,050 theaters
- $6.5 million on Wednesday from other advance screenings from 2,300 theaters
- $18.2 million on Thursday from 3,350 theaters, including standard screenings and Double Features with the first “Wicked”
The Thursday screenings, if you went to a double feature, began as early as 11 a.m. yesterday, a true matinee, and at 2 p.m. for other standard showings. It’s early enough in the day that you could say it’s already been in theaters for a full day, practically as a wide release. But because it’s before Friday, Glinda is waving her magic wand and telling us all that this magic number is really just “previews.”
“Wicked: For Good” is projected for an opening weekend between $150-180 million, which could give it a chance to be the biggest opening weekend of the year and would put it ahead of where the original “Wicked” opened, which wound up with $758.6 million worldwide. The biggest domestic box office opening of 2025 is “A Minecraft Movie,” which did $162.8 million. Its preview total? Just $10.6 million in Thursday previews, though kids movies always do less in previews because most kids generally aren’t staying out super late on a school night.
Look, literally every studio gooses their numbers this way, so no dig on Universal. But while the trades love to tout these big box office numbers, they mean less than they ever did in terms of projecting how a movie will actually open in a given weekend.
Once upon a time, “previews” meant quite literally what a movie did in a handful of midnight movie screenings on a Friday at 12:01 a.m., and some of those films did staggering numbers. I have fond memories of working my tail off at the concession stand at my local Marcus Theaters to service a hoard of fans piling in for as many midnight screenings of “The Dark Knight” as my theater could fit in, and that movie made $18.5 million and certainly wasn’t opening at 2 p.m. on a Thursday.
“Wicked: For Good” is directed by Jon M. Chu and stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the adaptation of the second act of the hit stage musical about the behind the scenes of what happened in Oz before Dorothy showed up.