Broadway’s Wicked Tops Thanksgiving Weekend Grosses as Movie’s Box Office Soars

Wicked on Broadway is defying the box office!

The hit stage musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holtzman has long been a fan-favorite. However, it recently got an extra boost of love during Thanksgiving weekend, which coincided with the successful release of the movie adaptation. 

According to data released by the Broadway League, Wicked was the top-grossing show on Broadway in the week ending on Dec. 1. The show, often one of the top grossers anyway, brought in $2,930,221 over the holiday week — exactly $370,061 more than its previous week. It played to 100 percent capacity throughout its eight shows, with a total of 15,408 people seeing the musical.

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Wicked. which tells the origin story of Oz’s witches, has been playing at the Gershwin Theatre in New York City since its premiere in 2003 with stars Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth as iconic characters Elphaba and Glinda.

Mary Kate Morrisesey and Alexandra Socha currently star as Elphaba and Glinda on stage. Other stars include Broadway legend Donna McKechnie (Madame Morrible), Brad Oscar (the Wizard), Jordan Litz (Fiyero), Jake Pedersen (Bow), Natalie Ortega (Nessarose) and William Youmans (Doctor Dillamond). 

Meanwhile, the hotly anticipated film adaptation by Jon M. Chu with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande debuted in movie theaters on Nov. 22 and broke box office records for the biggest opening weekend for a Broadway-to-film adaptation as it occupied the No. 1 spot on charts. 

The movie, part one of a two-part movie adaptation, earned $114 million from 3,888 theaters over its opening weekend, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. The musical flick kept its momentum in week two despite falling into the No. 2 spot. Variety reports that it grossed $81.1 million over the weekend and $118.2 million over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Ticket sales for the theater industry in New York City tends to increase during the holiday season, especially for commercialized works. In addition to Wicked’s success, The Lion King was the second-highest grossing show with $2.88 million and Hamilton in third place at $2.6 million.

In fact, the overall industry gross was up 23 percent from its previous week and reached a total of $46 million, an increase from 2023’s $34.5 million. 

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Broadway veteran Erivo — who won a Tony Award for Broadway’s 2015 revival of The Color Purple, a Grammy for its cast recording and an Emmy for a live performance from the musical on Today — recently spoke about singing live and performing her own stunts in the Wicked movie during a post-screening discussion at the DGA Theatre in N.Y.C.

The two-time Oscar nominee explained that she put herself through “rigorous training” to “make sure that her body was prepared.”

“I had an amazing vocal coach who just helped me find the breath I needed in order to do it,” she explained. “Because usually if you’re singing something like that, that needs a lot of force, that needs a lot of sound. Usually you need the ground to push off of.”

Ultimately, Erivo said, “I just did everything in my power that I could.”

“I endured whatever bruises and chafing and whatever it was necessary to. … I wanted to make sure that I could experience both what flight felt like and what it felt like to sing that song, in one. And I hope it was worth it.”

The movie musical’s cast also features Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage, Bowen Yang and Marissa Bode.

Tickets for Wicked on Broadway are now on sale. The Wicked movie is currently in theaters.