'Wicked' Arrives In Theaters With An Unprecedented Audience Score

Wicked

There has been a whole lot of controversy about Wicked leading up to its release this weekend, from its casting to its press tour to its decision to break itself up into two parts. But now? The film is arriving in theaters with stunning feedback from those who have already seen it.

Wicked currently boasts a near-perfect 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes with 1,000 verified viewers having seen the film in early release areas. Tracking this sort of thing for years, I have almost never seen a film with this many verified reviews in managing to nab this high of an audience score.

There is one catch here, and that is if these people were able to see the film early before even wide release, they may be the type of Wicked superfans that were prone to give it high scores more than more general audiences. However, if Wicked superfans do love it, that must mean it’s a pretty stellar adaptation of one of the most-beloved musicals of all time.

Wicked

Currently, there is only a single positive critic review in for Wicked. As in, it’s the only review, making me think it may have broken some sort of embargo that will likely lift for other critics in the next couple of days. We will see if those scores match this one.

Wicked is poised to be an absolute monster at the box office, with predictions ranging from a $100-$150 million opening weekend. With a reported budget of $145 million, that would eclipse that immediately. I do not think it’s a stretch to imagine that if the film really is that good, and word of mouth spreads accordingly, Wicked could be on its way to a billion-dollar haul. Only 55 movies ever have broken that mark, but if anything is going to do it this year that isn’t a Pixar film or Deadpool and Wolverine, it seems like it could easily be Wicked.

It's rare you can see a box office storm in the making to this degree that isn’t some sort of blockbuster superhero feature. It reminds me of Barbie and Oppenheimer last year, which put up numbers far beyond anyone was expecting. And those didn’t even have these kinds of audience scores. Wicked is about to become one of the biggest success stories in Hollywood this year, and suddenly, breaking it up into two parts to potentially double the massive haul it’s about to receive seems like a pretty good idea.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.