‘Wicked’ box office: Hollywood needs family-friendly movies

Everyone’s wondering if ‘Glicked’ is the potentially record-breaking, industry-raising combination from before Thanksgiving “Bad” And ‘Gladiator II’, will be this year’s “Barbenheimer,” the record-breaking, industry-elevating summer combination of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

Could be. I hope so. But it’s hard not to think everyone is missing the point.

Because the future of Hollywood doesn’t depend on who sees both movies on the same day. It depends on who’s going to see ‘Wicked’ in the same row. Share Twizzlers and a bowl of popcorn.

Families.

Double feature combos are certainly a new and fun way to engage audiences and beat the box office, and I would never disrespect the Oscar-winning ‘Oppenheimer,’ which did astonishingly well with audiences considering its serious biopic- genre. For its part, “Gladiator II” certainly looks like a gas.

But it was ‘Barbie’, and now ‘Wicked’, that brought in quite a few votes in the seats: the musical adaptation from Universal Pictures earned $114 million at the domestic box office this weekend, he helmed the $55.5 million cost of Paramount’s sword-and-sandals epic. And it will be “Moana 2” that continues to do so over Thanksgiving weekend, if its projected $125 million opening comes to fruition. Not the demographically targeted R-rated projects, but the big, festive films that the whole family can enjoy.

‘Something the whole family can enjoy’ used to be a selling point. Now, in an age of targeted demographics, where Hollywood has decided that an R rating is all but required for a movie to be considered “important,” that has become a joke. Calling something not made by Pixar/Disney “family friendly” immediately makes it uncool and certainly not sexy. Despite their eagerness to tout the elusive “four-quadrant” productions, most studios these days aren’t going out of their way to make family-friendly films. At least not the ones that exist outside of the MCU.

And yet, like “Barbie” and this summer’s big hit, “Inside Out 2,” “Wicked” has played to huge audiences across demographics, not to mention generations, and no doubt many, many families. (Who, if early accounts are any indication, were willing to sing along to many of the songs, to the consternation of those who were not.)

If Hollywood really wants to make a comeback, it needs to take this lesson to heart: If you want to sell a bunch of tickets and popcorn, families are the ultimate consumer group. For good reason.

Streaming may have taken over the world, but trust me when I say that parents want to take their kids, of all ages, to the movies. When your children are small, this offers the rare opportunity to do something they enjoy, while you can sit for two hours without arguing or constant demands. Bliss! If you like the movie, even better.

If your children are teenagers or young adults, movies provide the increasingly rare opportunity to share an experience where everyone is fully involved. Unlike home movie nights, dining out, or virtually any group activity, cell phone use is prohibited in movie theaters. Even though complaints about bad behavior in movie theaters are on the rise, it’s still more likely here than anywhere else that you can experience the joy of watching movies without feeling forced to, after turning off the lighted phone and the curved your child’s head, ask, “Are you even watching this?” That’s true, because that’s the only thing they can do. And then, at least on the ride home, you’ll all have something to talk about that doesn’t require explaining how people used to navigate entire cities without the benefit of an app, or show you what they mean by doing something to play on TikTok.

Once again, if only temporarily, you have a shared language. Amazing!

And more than any other customer, families—by which I mean any group that includes at least two generations, with the oldest paying—see the movie theater experience as an outing, which means snacks are a given.

Once you’ve gone through the trouble of finding the time when everyone is free, arguing about seats, buying the tickets, and getting everyone to the theater on time, a parent (or grandparent or aunt or older brother) will be the don’t draw the line at giving this one a hot dog and that one a slushy. No, this is now officially a mini vacation, so pretzel bites and cones everywhere. (And with “Wicked,” buyers can console themselves with how much cheaper even the most concession-heavy movie experience is compared to seeing the stage version.)

So why, in an industry struggling to maintain its physical business model in a digital world, are there so few films that the whole family can enjoy?

Once upon a time, there were four-quadrant films in virtually every genre. Oh, for the golden years of the “Harry Potter” franchise, which overlapped with “The Lord of the Rings” in its first three years. I will long remember the wonders of 2005, including family-friendly hits like “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Batman Begins,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “Madagascar,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “The Corpse Bride,” “King Kong,” “Nanny McPhee,” “Robots,” “Sky High,” “Zathura: A Space Adventure,” “Hoodwinked !” “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and of course the enduring classic “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D.”

Our family practically lived in the movie theater that year.

This is not an argument against sex, violence, mature themes, or anything else that earns the R rating for a given film. That same year we released ‘Brokeback Mountain’, ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, ‘The Constant Gardener’, ‘Cinderella Man’, ‘A History of Violence’, ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’, ‘Wedding Crashers’, ‘Pride and Prejudice” and many other beautiful, sophisticated films for adults.

But with the notable exception of superhero movies, Hollywood seems increasingly willing to throw out the baby, or at least the 8-year-old, with the bathwater.

So while it’s smart to marry and promote films as different as ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ or ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’, let’s not lose sight of which films attract the larger audience. To paraphrase another film that drew multiple generations to the multiplex: If you build it, they will come. Especially if they can take the kids with them.