Exception for you. Good to see you. Much appreciated. Moviegoing is one of the big Thanksgiving weekend traditions for a lot of people, but ahead of it, the land of Oz continues to defy gravity. One year later, Universal Pictures' Wicked for Good is equal to last year's popular adoption of the Broadway musical, smashing the windows of the box office this past weekend and marking the second biggest U.S. film debut for 2025 behind Minecraft movie. Comcast is the company behind Universal Pictures which released the film. Comcast down 3%. Domestically, Wicked for Good earned $150 million during opening weekend, internationally another $76 million, bringing the worldwide total to $226 million. Of those numbers, IMAX showing accounted for $15.5 million of the domestic haul, which is a November record for the company. Internationally, they brought in $5.6 million, which brings the box office total to $21.1 million. Something tells me that's counting. The Fox Business exclusive IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond live in studio. What you expect? Her way higher than the first one has a lot of momentum.
The one located thing. There was competition last year with Utopia opens up this Wednesday night, and that is a Disney movie that did over a billion dollars the last one. It's a high-class problem where we are playing both, so I'm very neutral in the battle. It is a great time of year in the movie business.
It sure is. You talk about Utopia. There are other movies coming out: Mystery, Marty Supreme, and Now You See Me, Now You Don't. That was early out. What do you predict for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas?
I think it will be very strong. I think Utopia and Wicked play to a family audience. As you said, this is the time of year that you want to go out with your families. This week my grandkids are coming out for Thanksgiving and we should go see Wicked and Utopia. And of course, you left off the pièce de résistance, which is Avatar.
I'm getting to that. The P.S., that's next. Rich, next month, Avatar, tell me about that. This is going to be up against SpongeBob or at least in the same realm.
It's going to be up against it. Avatar is in a class by itself. The last two are the biggest movies of all time, with a bar over $2 billion from other movies. I ask people what they think, and they say two things: whatever you do, don't bet against it, and number two, that is a big number. I'm not betting against Jim Cameron.
Remakes and sequels. It seems like some people want to see what's familiar. The remake of Anacondas coming up. I saw the first one. If you want to talk cheesy, it was so cheesy. I liked it because I love death and destruction. No romance for me. But I will tell you, how do you think Anaconda might do?
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Gelfond, R. (2025, November 24). Holiday movie SURGE: IMAX CEO says it’s ‘a great time of year to be in the movie business’ [Interview transcript]. Fox Business Clips. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1043980/
MLA
Richard Gelfond. "Holiday movie SURGE: IMAX CEO says it’s ‘a great time of year to be in the movie business’." Fox Business Clips, 24 Nov. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1043980/.
BibTeX
@misc{gelfond2025_1043980,
author = {Richard Gelfond},
title = {Holiday movie SURGE: IMAX CEO says it’s ‘a great time of year to be in the movie business’},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Fox Business Clips. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1043980/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
