In this week’s episode of the Boxoffice Podcast, brought to you by One Ultra Screens, co-hosts Daniel Loria and Chad Kennerk discuss the highest-earning Thanksgiving weekend frame of all time, driven by Disney's Moana 2, Universal's Wicked, and Paramount's Gladiator II. Exhibitors including AMC, Regal, and Cinemark all reported record-breaking holiday weekends. In the feature segment, Daniel speaks to Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a professor of cinema studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, about the evolution of Broadway adaptations, highlighting the rise and fall of the Hollywood musical and the recent success of Wicked, the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation of all-time.

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What to Listen For

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:20 Highest-Earning Thanksgiving Weekend Overview
• 01:07 Wicked Becomes Highest-Grossing Broadway Adaptation
• 01:50 Thanksgiving Movie Experiences: Moana 2 and Gladiator II
• 03:38 Denzel Washington’s Performance in Gladiator II
• 06:17 Thanksgiving Box Office Records Analysis
• 07:15 Moana 2 Breaks Multiple Box Office Records
• 09:41 International Performance of Moana 2
• 10:47 Wicked’s Sophomore Frame Performance and Global Numbers
• 11:47 Gladiator II: Domestic and International Highlights
• 12:07 Record Attendance for AMC Theaters
• 13:04 Regal’s Thanksgiving Records and Merchandising Success
• 14:00 Cinemark Achieves Best Food & Beverage Revenue Day
• 15:14 Thanksgiving Box Office Recovery Analysis
• 16:21 Feature Segment with Ernesto Munoz Begins
• 17:01 History of the Broadway-to-Hollywood Pipeline
• 22:47 Evolution of the Movie Musical in the 1930s
• 27:34 MGM’s Role in Shaping Musicals in the 1940s
• 30:00 Broadway Adaptations and 1950s Hollywood Musicals
• 32:27 West Side Story as a Turning Point
• 35:00 Decline of Hollywood Musicals in the Late 1960s
• 37:50 Cabaret’s Influence in the 1970s
• 40:00 Rock Musicals: Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar
• 44:00 Revival of the Musical in the Early 2000s
• 45:22 Why Wicked Works as a Movie
• 47:00 Anticipation for Wicked Part Two
• 50:22 Modern Musical Success Stories and Future Prospects