Things look pretty dire when a reviled second sequel in the Venom franchise remains atop the box office for a third weekend in a row.
Venom: The Last Dance seems to have somehow caught on for some reason. It’s a film with a 41% Rotten Tomatoes score and a B- Cinemascore grade, yet it still made $15 million in its third weekend. That shows that, no matter how much the opening night audiences were mixed on it, someone seems to like it. It’s no Joker: Folie à Deux, of course. I’m not a box office analyst, but worldwide, it’s made around $400 million, which will save Sony the kind of monetary bleeding that plagued Warner Bros with Joker.
But is it really a matter of people finding the film or is there nothing else to see? Maybe people do find some sort of kitsch value in it. Maybe non-Deadpool superhero films aren’t truly dead after all. We’ll see next year when Marvel returns with something of a full slate. But whatever the reason, people are still going to the movies, and they’re still going to see Venom.
All of that will change, of course, on November 22 when Wicked and Gladiator II drop in theaters after weeks of, at least on the Wicked side, huge buzz and awards proclamations across the board. Online fans desperate to coin a phrase have dubbed this the second coming of “Barbenheimer” (Barbie and the Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer, of course). Initial phrasing pointed toward the awkward “Wickediator” (ugh) before setting on the more palatable “Glicked.” Early tracking points toward a $100 million opening for Wicked coupled with a $60 million opening for Gladiator II. However, early tracking for “Barbenheimer” ended up undercutting the excitement that drove walk-up traffic to a massive record weekend.
Will the same happen for “Glicked?” My guess is that it will be a huge weekend, but maybe the titles won’t see the massive uptick that benefitted Barbie and Oppenheimer. That’s mostly because those two films opened in the dead of summer. Wicked and Gladiator II open just before the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States, and my sense is that audiences, particularly families, will likely wait until the holiday weekend to go to the movies. With Moana 2 opening the day before Thanksgiving, it’s going to be a massive 5-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend at the North American box office.
So, what does that mean for the Oscar race?
Well, early buzz on Wicked is through the roof. Many online who haven’t seen it yet have been skeptical, pointing to a similar situation last year with the musical version of The Color Purple. Some early audiences raved about that film in initial screenings before it died on release around the Christmas holiday. To me, these are totally different beasts. First, The Color Purple felt vaguely dumped by Warner Bros at the time with a handful of select screenings and early screeners made available to awards-voting bodies. There were few lavish, star-studded premieres, which made sense because it wasn’t that kind of film. It was an adaptation of a stage musical that needed two Broadway incarnations before finding its audience.
Wicked, on the other hand, is one of the most popular Broadway musicals of all time, and Universal absolutely understands that they needed the headlines to ensure their investment would pay off. And it will. Massively. This film could hit $2 billion worldwide, and I would not be the least bit surprised. There’s no doubt the enthusiasm and the film will play straight through the Christmas holiday season, perfectly positioning it for maximum impact with the Academy. Right now, I’m thinking the ceiling for the film is around 7 nominations: Picture, Supporting Actress, Production Design, Costumes, Makeup and Hair, Sound, and Visual Effects. The truth is probably somewhere in the 5-6 range, but it could go higher if the Academy goes nuts for it. That would mean Cynthia Erivo gets into a very hotly contested Best Actress race.
But I’ll know how possible all of that is when I see the film this Sunday. And when the reviews come in…
On the other front, Gladiator II saw equally effusive praise only to fall dramatically when the reviews came out. It currently sits at a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 67 on Metacritic. That’s respectable, of course, and matches the eventual narrative of “It’s fun, but…” that recently settled. It certainly doesn’t match the early “tastemaker” screening reactions that came from the first screening. And of course that’s what many are saying will happen to Wicked, right? We’ll see…
For Gladiator II, ironically, the ceiling for Oscar nominations is much higher. I’m seeing somewhere around 9 nominations: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Production Design, Costumes, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, and Visual Effects. That’s not just because of Ridley Scott — the Academy certainly wasn’t persuaded by House of Gucci or The Last Duel or Napoleon. I’ll know more when I see the film in a week, but this could be a fun, bloody, massive spectacle of a good time at the movies catapulted by strong box office performance, particularly with the Christmas box office season looking slightly thin.
Which gives real Best Picture threats like Conclave and Anora all the runway they need to become bonafide box office hits, building on their very strong early performance.
Until then, here’s my current ranking of the potential 2025 Best Picture Oscar nominees.
- Anora
- Conclave
- The Brutalist
- Gladiator II
- Emilia Pérez
- A Real Pain
- Dune: Part Two
- Wicked
- Blitz
- September 5
