“Wicked: For Good” has delivered a strong opening by any normal box office standard, but when measured against the explosive performance of 2024’s “Wicked,” the decline becomes clear almost immediately.
The first film finished with roughly $475 million domestic and around $759 million worldwide, making it one of the top-performing musicals in modern box office history. The sequel, released in 2025, stands at about $297 million domestic and approximately $440 million worldwide as of early December. These numbers confirm that the new film is successful overall, but its performance is noticeably softer when compared day-to-day with its predecessor’s trajectory.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande on the Wicked Press Tour – YouTube, GLAAD
READ: Wicked: For Good Box Office Craters as Sequel Now Projected to Finish Far Below the Original
To understand how poorly “Wicked: For Good” is performing, however, consider that the movie dropped an astounding 73% in its third weekend. Sure, the latest “Five Nights at Freddy’s” may have released, but that’s a completely different genre of film. It’s beginning to look like the Wicked second half is falling flat with audiences!
At the start, the sequel actually opened higher, debuting with a massive $147 million domestic opening weekend versus the original film’s $112.5 million. Its opening Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all exceeded those of the first film, fueled by enormous fan demand and record-setting pre-sales. In its first three days, “Wicked: For Good” was ahead of the original by double-digit percentages, suggesting at first glance that the sequel might outpace the 2024 film throughout its run. But this early surge turned out to be the high-water mark rather than the beginning of a sustained lead. After the initial weekend, the momentum shifted sharply.
Ariana Grande as Glinda in Wicked – Peacock
From the first Monday onward, “Wicked: For Good” began falling behind the daily numbers posted by “Wicked.” During its first weekday stretch, the sequel trailed the original by mid-single-digit percentages, then by double digits, and by the end of the first full week, it was performing about 24% lower than the corresponding days of the first movie. The second weekend accelerated this decline, with the original having earned just over $81 million during its second frame compared to the sequel’s roughly $62 million, a drop of nearly a quarter. By the third weekend, the disparity widened dramatically: “Wicked” earned about $36 million at the same stage of its run, while “Wicked: For Good” delivered barely half that total at around $17 million. In the latter stretch of the third week, the daily grosses were often 50% to 60% below the first film’s equivalent days.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande sing at the Oscars – YouTube, Oscars
This steeper day-to-day erosion reflects several key dynamics. The sequel appears significantly more front-loaded than the original, driven by huge anticipation from fans of the first movie. That front-loading compressed demand into the earliest available showtimes rather than letting the film build gradually throughout the holiday window.
Critics also received the original more warmly; the first film opened in the high-80s on Rotten Tomatoes, while “Wicked: For Good” debuted roughly twenty points lower. Though audiences remain enthusiastic, weaker critical reception tends to limit casual or repeat viewership… the exact audience cohort responsible for the long legs that made the first “Wicked” such a juggernaut. The sequel also faces stiffer competition than the original did, releasing alongside “Zootopia 2” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” both of which have captured major portions of the family and teen markets. Still the original “Wicked” went up against “Moana 2” and did just fine, so that likely doesn’t work as an excuse.
Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in Wicked: For Good – Universal Pictures
At this point, “Wicked: For Good” has a steep hill to climb to ever hope $600M is on the table. And that means that while the press may continue to fawn over Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, you know that studio execs are already questioning whether or not their strangeness prompted lower ticket sales as they continued to behave bizarrely. Yes, helicopter tears, we’re talking about you.
ariana trying to console cynthia while theres a helicopter flying over them pic.twitter.com/cbEqMNEFCA
— ariana grande gifs (@vodolove) November 22, 2024
Taken together, these factors illustrate why “Wicked: For Good,” despite its splashy opening and solid overall performance, is running well below the day-to-day benchmarks set by the 2024 film. The sequel’s initial lead evaporated quickly, leaving it roughly 8% behind in cumulative totals by day 17 and trending far below the weekend-to-weekend strength of its predecessor. While it remains a bona fide hit by any reasonable standard—and a triumph for the musical genre—its softer daily legs indicate a more modest box office ceiling than the one reached by the original.
In short, the Oz franchise remains powerful, but the sequel is clearly gliding where its predecessor soared. And that might mean a quiet fading about more trips to the world of Wicked.
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