Why Wicked: For Good Blew Everyone Away At The Box Office

After years of stewing in development, moviegoers finally got to see a film version of the Broadway musical "Wicked" on the big screen in November 2024. There was always the possibility that waiting so long to get this film adaptation realized would've made the project old news by the time it hit multiplexes. Instead, "Wicked" blew everyone away at the box office. The saga of Elphaba and Glinda was just as powerful as ever. It was so mighty, in fact, that it couldn't be confined to just one feature.

With a $150 million domestic debut, "Wicked: For Good" had the second-biggest domestic launch of 2025. Like its predecessor, it utterly shattered box office norms for non-Disney musical movies, making a huge amount of money for Universal. This is a remarkable debut on every level, but how did we get here? There are several reasons "Wicked: For Good" had such a gargantuan domestic launch. Read on for all the reasons that "Wicked: For Good" followed in the footsteps of the first film and smashed the box office.

In the last four months of domestic box office activity, massive openings have been scarce. Only one movie ("The Conjuring: Last Rites") has opened to $75+ million domestically since "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" bowed to $117 million in July 2025. Since then, the marketplace has seen a slew of features opening in the $20 to $35 million range. Ed and Lorraine Warren can't hold up the box office all by themselves. The only positive of this dearth of massive openers was that it ensured "Wicked: For Good" filled a real niche in the marketplace.

This wasn't a blockbuster competing against multiple other movies that recently opened to $100+ million domestically. Instead, it provided moviegoers with their first big must-see feature in months. There was a craving for a major theatrical movie event after the likes of "Tron: Ares" flopped at the box office. After that dry spell, movie theater owners reaped the rewards of "Wicked: For Good," the box office equivalent of a boisterous rainstorm. The financial drought of autumn 2025's cinema landscape was over.

Calling the first "Wicked" movie a critical smash would be an understatement. The film has a Certified Fresh score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes from over 400 reviews, so it's safe to say that the critics by and large adored it. When it comes to audience reviews, the numbers are even better: "Wicked" is Verified Hot with a near-perfect score of 95% on the Popcornmeter. The positive reviews just kept on rolling in over the weeks and months, and that's because the film had major legs.

"Wicked" didn't vanish from theaters the moment major December tentpoles arrived. It held up significantly better than usual for a pre-Thanksgiving blockbuster. After opening to a fabulous $112.5 million, "Wicked" did 4.22 times its debut over its entire domestic run. As late as its sixth weekend of release, it was still churning out $19+ million weekend hauls. That longevity came down to its incredible word of mouth, which clearly carried over to the sequel — the buzz generated by the original helped the follow-up get off to a roaring start.

The pre-release buzz surrounding "Wicked: For Good" was intimately focused on the here and now. Specifically, this blockbuster didn't hinge its marketing campaign on promises of teases for further sequels or streaming TV show spin-offs. Instead, the lead-up to this feature was about emphasizing that this was the end of the road. "Wicked: For Good" promised audiences finality and a decisive conclusion to Elphaba and Glinda's storyline. That proved incredibly accurate to the final feature, which has no cliffhanger endings or mid-credit scenes hinting at subsequent Oz adventures.

That sense of imminent closure is rare in a blockbuster landscape where features usually end with text promising that your beloved characters will return. Just take a look at the slate of upcoming Disney sequels you may not know are in the works, and it becomes clear how unending franchises are the lifeblood of modern Hollywood. Subverting this standard worked wonders for "Wicked: For Good." It also mimicked the original Broadway musical's two-act structure, no doubt pleasing fans of the stage production. The box office success of "Wicked: For Good" showed that finality can still be a good thing in Tinseltown.

2001's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was a massive box office hit that didn't just score the biggest North American debut ever at the time of its release, it also upended what kind of movies dropped in cineplexes over the pre-Thanksgiving weekend. This frame now belonged to fantasy movies that could often double as family moviegoing experiences. Most of the "Twilight" and "Hunger Games" features also opened over this crucial interval, and even "Frozen II" scored lots of moolah debuting over the pre-Thanksgiving weekend frame in 2019. Both "Wicked" films have benefitted from this reality.

Of course, the box office success of the "Wicked" movies can't be solely attributed to release dates. Given the enduring popularity of the "Wicked" musical and the original "Wizard of Oz" stories, it's likely the "Wicked" films could have made a pretty penny even if they opened in January or September. However, there's no doubt that this pre-Thanksgiving timeframe helped amplify the box office receipts of "Wicked" and its sequel. Folks are clearly in the mood for some fantasy cinema spectacle as they prepare to munch on turkey with the family.

For the longest time, it's been generally accepted that a PG-13 rating is essential for scoring a box office hit in Hollywood. That's partially why there are so many R-rated movies with PG-13 sequels: Hollywood can't resist the financial allure of a PG-13 title, believing that by casting the net as wide as possible in terms of potential customers, the returns will naturally be bigger. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. There have been some R-rated movies that scored big at the box office, like "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the "Deadpool" movies. However, it now seems like things are going in the opposite direction in terms of ratings.

The 2020s have seen the tide change dramatically regarding which MPA rating is connected to the biggest box office hits. 2024 and 2025's highest-grossing motion pictures at the North American box office have largely been rated PG, with 2025's top two domestic performers to date being PG blockbusters ("A Minecraft Movie" and "Lilo & Stitch"). This was the box office landscape "Wicked: For Good" — which also boasts a PG rating — entered and ultimately thrived in. "Wicked: For Good" managed to walk a fine line in terms of its content: Yes, it's a pure family film on the surface, but there's sexual tension in certain scenes. Of course, you're only going to notice that if you're an adult, and that's the real magic of this film.