As we enter a major weekend for Hollywood, how successful are Wicked and Gladiator II projected to be?
Although Thanksgiving cooking is a major event on its own, the next two weekends serve as a time when major studios try to cash in on the audience’s free time. The two major releases this weekend, John M. Chu’s Wicked and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, have bot h heavily campaigned for eyeballs, leaving questions about whether both can find box office success during the first week of their respective domestic releases. Internationally, Gladiator II has been released in some territories and made more than $80 million dollars in the process; Wicked has yet to open up its wide release but is projected to make more than $100 million in its opening weekend. With many referencing Barbenheimer, due to both films’ heavy promotion and different audience demographics, it does beg folks to wonder how each film will ultimately do financially and during awards season. Rebecca Rubin, senior film and media reporter for Variety, joins us to discuss this.