By Angela Palumbo

Domestic ticket sales got a boost after Wicked: For Good hit theaters this weekend, but those sales, along with the performances of upcoming movie releases, need to keep rising in order for the film industry to pass 2025 box office forecasts.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande's performances as Elphaba and Glinda the Good in the latest Wicked installment have helped bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the box office since the movie hit theaters this weekend. Specifically, the movie brought in $226 million globally and $150 million domestically, making it the biggest all-time global opening for a movie adaptation of a Broadway musical.

"It received fantastic critic reviews, amazing audience review scores. It's a social phenomena," Roth Capital Partners analyst Eric Handler told Barron's on Tuesday.

Stores like Target and Walmart are carrying Wicked merchandise including clothes and toys, companies are collaborating on Wicked themed products, like the General Mills Wicked cereals, and restaurants like Chili's are offering Wicked-themed drink specials.

But even though Wicked: For Good has seemingly taken the world by storm, the fan fare might not be enough to push box office sales over analyst expectations for 2025 following a slate of films this year that underperformed.

Handler told Barron's that the domestic box office total was about $8.6 billion in 2024, and experts were looking for the box office to grow anywhere between $500 million to $1 billion in 2025 from last year.

"We're currently not going to hit the high end of those expectations. And I would say there's growing concerns that we may fall a little bit short of $9 billion, but not that much," he said. "We're going to grow versus 2024. The question is, are we going to be able to exceed 2023, which did $8.9 billion? I hope we will."

The box office took a slight hit in 2024 as the industry was still recovering from the Hollywood writers strike, Handler said. But this year's box office performance has struggled to make a splash even without that headwind.

"There just wasn't a lot of support up until now. October was ugly. It was one of the worst Octobers in quite some time -- a couple decades," Handler said. "It didn't help that we had that Michael Jackson biopic moved from October to next summer and then Mortal Kombat got moved till next year. Those are not inconsequential impacts and you just really didn't really have much to replace those two movies."

There a few upcoming releases to close out the year that could help push up ticket sales, like Zootopia 2 on Nov. 26 and Avatar: Fire and Ash on Dec. 19, but it won't be easy.

Even if this year misses expectations, Handler points to a handful of movies that are being released over the next two years that could bolster movie attendances. Some standouts include The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, The Odyssey, and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

"Last year, you had two movies that did over $600 million. We've had good successes this year, we just haven't had $600 million successes this year. But I think that could change next year," he said. "When you look to next year, and even 2027, they're definitely loaded with high-end blockbusters."

Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 25, 2025 16:35 ET (21:35 GMT)

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