Here’s hoping ‘Glicked’ will get us back to costly cinemas

Forget Barbenheimer, we’re about to get ‘Glicked’ – but will the next double blockbuster bill be enough to get people back on to cinema seats?, asks Kerry Parnell.

Forget Barbenheimer, we’re about to get “Glicked”. That’s the term Gladiator star Paul Mescal has labelled the next double blockbuster bill coming to cinemas.

But will the new movie duo actually be enough to get our lazy bums back on to cinema seats?

Gladiator II, starring Irish actor Mescal, 28, as the sandal-wearing warrior Lucius, and Wicked – the movie version of the long-running musical – starring Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, will hit US cinemas on November 22, ahead of Thanksgiving. In Australia, Gladiator II is scheduled for November 22 and Wicked November 28, so Aussies will have to wait a week if they wish to defy gravity.

But Mescal is hopeful the unlikely pairing will do what Barbie and Oppenheimer did in 2023 and encourage people back into the cinema. Between them, the movies grossed almost $US2.5bn. Then we all stopped going again.

Gladiator II star Paul Mescal.

“Wickdiator doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it? I think my preference would probably be Glicked if it has a similar effect to what it did for Barbie and Oppenheimer,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “It would be amazing because I think the films couldn’t be more polar opposites, and it worked in that context previously. So, fingers crossed people come out and see both films on opening weekend.”

Wicked director Jon M. Chu with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda.

And goodness knows we need some kind of push to get people to step foot outside their homes, as a worldwide movie malaise seems to have been cast over cinemas this year, which even the much-anticipated Mad Max prequel Furiosa, in May, couldn’t shift. It took a disappointing $US173m worldwide at the box office, half as much as Mad Max: Fury Road did in 2015.

Still, if anyone can make movie magic happen, it’s the combo of a rhino-wrestling gladiator and broomstick-riding green witch. Elphaba needs to cast a memory spell that reminds us all how much fun it is to go the cinema, before they do a vanishing act too, like our stores, leaving us stranded on our sofas, ordering our entire lives online – from dating to dinner, movies to clothes. Now that’s a depressing vision.

There’s no place like home – except when you go no place else.

Industry experts credit multiple reasons why we’ve been deserting cinemas, from the cost – and it really isn’t cheap – to lockdown breaking our habits, plus a pause in production because of the actors’ strike. I’m guilty too – the last film I saw in a cinema was Wonka in December and now it’s July.

Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II. Picture: Paramount Pictures

Still, the good news is Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II looks like the epic we need. The trailer, which dropped this week, shows Mescal as Lucius, son of the original movie’s Lucilla, fighting the aforementioned rhino, plus Pedro Pascal as muscled-up general Marcus Acacius and Denzel Washington as political slave-owner Macrinus. Mescal is so beefed up, Pascal nicknamed him “Brick Wall Paul”.

It has togas, sword-fighting and what appears to be sharks in a flooded arena battle scene. I mean, come on … if that doesn’t pop your corn, then nothing will.

As Russell Crowe bellowed 24 years ago, are you not entertained?

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