When it came to her take on Glinda, Ariana Grande didn’t want to stray too far from the original. Wicked composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz recently revealed that while recording the movie musical’s track ‘Popular’, the actress shot down an attempt to “hip-hop it up a little bit” on the Jon M. Chu…

As the world continues to fly high on Glicked, Paul Mescal is reaching across the aisle and giving a round of applause. The Oscar nominee praised Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande‘s performances in Wicked after the Jon M. Chu-helmed movie musical adaptation premiered the same day as his Ridley Scott…

The worst thing a studio can do on a massive weekend like this is over-project. And if there’s one thing about Thanksgiving forecasts, they always get over-projected. Right now, Disney’s Moana 2 is putting up an estimated $54M first day, inclusive of Tuesday’s Walt Disney Animation preview record of…

WEDNESDAY UPDATE AFTER EXCLUSIVE: Disney’s Moana 2 came in at $13.8M in previews Tuesday night, which is the best preview figure ever for a Walt Disney Animation title, the best ever for the studio on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (ahead of Ralph Breaks the Internet‘s $3.8M) and the second-highest…

Universal made the unusual move of publicly addressing online speculation about pay disparity between its Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Rumors percolated on a Reddit post that Grande was paid $15 million for her turn as Glinda, while Erivo collected only $1 million for her role as…

Before Moana 2 rains a monsoon of cash, Universal’s Wicked will not go quietly in the night. In fact, on Monday the musical starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande was grande indeed with a studio reported $15.8 million box office take. That’s the best Monday ever for November, better than Frozen II…

If you were shopping in Target this weekend, you didn’t hear the sound of Christmas carols over the loudspeaker, rather the showstopper “Defying Gravity” from Universal’s Wicked. But there’s more, for on the main throughfare at the Sunset Boulevard location is a standee of Wicked attire, from…

In the wake of one of the best pre-Thanksgiving frames in over a decade with Wicked and Gladiator II drumming up a $200M-plus frame, crowded lobbies around the world will remain intact this week as Disney’s Moana 2 joins the fray with what’s expected to be a $225M+ largely day-and-date global…

AMC Theatres, the biggest circuit globally, posted the highest domestic revenue in its 104-year history for a pre-Thanksgiving weekend counting admissions, food and beverage, and merchandise. The past three days, with the debuts of Wicked and Gladiator 2, the circuit also saw the highest domestic…

Wicked director Jon M. Chu explained his approach to the sweeping musical’s color grading, after some fans online lamented that the film did not contain the same technicolor prowess present in the original 1939 The Wizard of Oz. In a recent interview with Canadian outlet The Globe and Mail, the Crazy…

With Wicked conquering the Earth, the million-dollar question for filmmaker Jon M. Chu as he reaps the biggest box office opening of his career ($164.2M) is where, oh, where is the Crazy Rich Asians sequel? The Warner Bros. movie broke glass ceilings not only on-screen for Asian and Asian American…

Updated Tuesday: Broadway musicals adapted to the screen are an erratic genre at the box office, despite Miramax’s multi-Oscar winning Chicago reviving the long-dormant Hollywood genre back in 2002 with $306.8M WW. Yet for every Les Miserables ($442.7M) hit from Universal, there were massive misfires like…