Wicked Flies Past Grease to Become the Top Broadway Musical at the Box Office

The highly anticipated Wicked movie directed by Jon M. Chu has taken the box office by storm, setting an historic record for Broadway musical adaptations. Based on the 2003 Broadway sensation with music by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman, itself adapted from Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, Wicked explores the untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.

Opening the weekend before Thanksgiving, Wicked bowed to an astonishing $112.5 million, the third-largest opening weekend of 2024. Through the five-day Thanksgiving stretch, the film is expected to bring in $118 million for a domestic total of $263 million.

That makes it unseat the former box-office champ, Grease, which had made $190 million domestically upon its original release back in 1978. If inflated for today, Grease would have banked an estimated $919.9 million, setting it as a very high bar indeed for Wicked, but most insiders believe the momentum is with the film to ultimately achieve it, not least since its record-breaking opening weekend.

Worldwide, Wicked is projected to cross the $358 million threshold through the end of its first week, getting within a winged monkey’s cackle of its $375 million break-even mark. Having cost $150 million to make, the film is primed to turn a handsome profit, even with extensive marketing costs.

The movie’s success is only the beginning. Wicked adapts just the first act of the musical, with a sequel scheduled for release in November 2025. Analysts predict the follow-up could outshine the original, benefiting from audience anticipation and the first film’s impact.