4 pieces
Leigh Whannell's January 2025 Wolf Man cost about $25 million and grossed about $36 million globally. The film is not the disaster the numbers suggest. The strategy around it is.
Universal's Wicked Part One grossed over $750 million globally. Part Two, released a year later, faces a specific commercial question familiar to every two-part release: does the second half hold?
Jon M. Chu's Wicked was the studio musical that worked, and the reasons it worked are specific to the form. A year on, its choices look like a template.
Leigh Whannell's follow-up to The Invisible Man arrived in January through Blumhouse and Universal. It is a smaller, stranger film than the one the marketing sold, and the smaller film is the better film.