With two of the most anticipated movie cameos of the year, Jon M. Chu had his work cut out for him. The Wicked director recently recounted how he conceived an appearance for the original Broadway musical’s stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth during the song ‘One Short Day’, performed with their…

EXCLUSIVE: Jon M. Chu learned to use his power in the right way — just as Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba does in Wicked. Chu says that after 15 years working with studios he knew "how the machine works" because otherwise, he says, it's very easy to get "overwhelmed by the pressures of fans, by the pressure…

Jon M. Chu's Wicked Part One is set to defy gravity when it comes to theaters just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. The first part of the musical film adaptation will compete against Ridley Scott's Gladiator II, which arrives in theaters on the same date for a combination much like the summer of 2023's B…

UPDATED: Paramount's Sonic The Hedgehog 3 is off and running overseas, where the threequel officially began rollout on Wednesday after last week's sizable previews. Through Sunday, and with previews included, the little critter has amassed $74M from 52 offshore markets. That lifts the global tally to $211…

Universal's Wicked has overtaken the studio's own Mamma Mia! to become the biggest stage musical adaptation of all time worldwide. The global cume through Sunday is an estimated $634.4M, of which $424.2M is from domestic and $210.2M from the international box office. Overseas, the current weekend…

Universal’s Wicked, which will fly past the $400M mark this week at the domestic box office, has set a digital release in homes of Dec. 31. That’s a 40-day theatrical window for Wicked since opening to the best opening ever for a Broadway musical at $112.5M. Wicked is already the highest grossing movie bas…

Elf the Musical, which returned to Broadway last month for a limited run, grossed $2,230,419 across eight performances for the week ending December 22, breaking the house record at the Marquis Theatre to highlight the pre-holiday box office frame. The revival, which stars Mean Girls Tony nominee Grey…

Don’t Look Up writer-director Adam McKay fears that movies such as Wicked could be banned in the U.S. in the future with the way the country is headed. "On a pure storytelling level 'Wicked Part 1' is right up there as one of the most radical big studio Hollywood movies ever made,” McKay wrote on X…

TUESDAY AM UPDATE: Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 cleared $10M on Monday, the first full day of kids and colleges students off from school. This brings the 4-Day on the Jeff Fowler directed threequel to $70.1M, which was the 3-day estimate on the movie back on Friday. So, it just took another day to get…

SUNDAY UPDATE: The big new cat this weekend landed with more of a meh than a roar as Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King pounced on a $122.2M worldwide start. That's way below our pre-weekend projections, and just slightly under where we saw this prequel yesterday. The international box office bow was $87.2M…

In a return to form, Saturday Night Live‘s “Weekend Update” featured Bowen Yang as another aggrieved inanimate object standing up for themselves (hat tip to previous performances as the Titanic iceberg and viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng). During this week’s final episode of the year, with host Martin…

Many of us survived the Covid days by rediscovering old MGM musicals, humming tunes from Singing In the Rain or doing a Fred Astaire tap from Top Hat. So if they represented islands of good cheer, let's get real about the new cycle of musicals: Like…