Is "Glicked" Confusing Perceptions of Gladiator 2's Box Office?

I remember how back in the summer of 2023 the media telling us that the "Barbenheimer" meme juxtaposed the two big feature film releases of July 21 of that year (Barbie and Oppenheimer) went "viral" online, Internet users reveling in the ironies of the contrast between a movie about plastic toys and a movie about (however much the media prefer to tell us it is about something, anything, else) THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR THAT HANGS OVER ALL OF US EVER MORE THREATENINGLY AS OPPENHEIMER DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN HIMSELF SPELLED OUT TO THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS LEST ANYONE MISS THE POINT.

I don't know that I believe that the Barbenheimer stupidity really did go "viral" the way the media claimed it did--precisely because everything I have seen about how the Internet works has left me only more and more convinced that things really don't go viral that way, that indeed the media just tells us they did, because it helps them push a particular narrative.

Still, whether or not Barbenheimer really did go viral or not the phenomenon did have one important feature in common with the great majority of those things we are told went viral--namely that it is extremely stupid, and each and every unfortunate contact with it like nails on a chalkboard.

Naturally the media, which can never resist repeating its stupidities, seized on the chance to reuse the marketing concept by talking up "Glicked"--the release of a screen adaptation of the revisionist Broadway musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz, Wicked, the same weekend as the bloody Roman pseudo-epic Gladiator II. (They slapped together the "Gl" from Gladiator and "icked" from Wicked. Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.)

The expectation was that just as Barbie and Oppenheimer both performed way above expectations at the box office, saving the until then really dismal summer season of 2023, so would Wicked and Gladiator. As it happened, neither movie quite lived up to the expectations observers held for it on their mutual opening weekend, each coming in under the range that Boxoffice Pro projected the Wednesday of their week of release.* Still, Wicked did just well enough then and after to be considered a very palpable hit (with $262 million banked after ten days in release, and decent prospects through the season), while Gladiator has . . . done less well. Apparently on track to end up with half what the original did after inflation, it may be that even with post-theatrical income counted in the movie will be reckoned a money-loser, though few seem willing to admit that. This is, I think, primarily because the entertainment press is pushing the narrative that Hollywood's model of blockbuster filmmaking is as salable as ever, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary--but it may be that the "Glicked" foolishness intended to help sell both movies is playing its part, predisposing observers to think of Gladiator II as a success, and even letting it benefit from association with the much more successful Wicked in the minds of the easily befuddled.

* Wicked, supposed to open with $120-$140 million, picked up only $114 million.