This weekend’s big new release Wicked is expected to drum up some massive box office numbers. Why wouldn’t it? Not only are the original musical and its Wizard of Oz source material both incredibly popular, but Wicked is arriving in theaters with an avalanche of positive buzz. There’s even a chance it could become one of the biggest live-action musical movies of all time at the worldwide box office, though its global numbers will be inherently limited by how the Oz lore skews very American. Still, Wicked is assured to be a big smash, box-office hit.
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Currently, the biggest live-action musical movie at the worldwide box office is 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, with that and fellow 2010s live-action Disney Animation remake Aladdin being the only live-action musicals in history to cross $1+ billion worldwide. Before the days of musicals cracking 10-digit figures globally, another entry in this genre reigned supreme at the global box office. Mamma Mia, the beloved camp classic, was the highest-grossing musical movie in history for a whopping nine years until Beast came around.
How Big Was Mamma Mia?
In its 2008 theatrical run, Mamma Mia grossed a staggering $584.48 million worldwide, only $144.54 million of that coming from North American moviegoers. This feature was buoyed not just by the original stage musical’s enormously popular reputation, but also by the band ABBA’s tremendous pop culture influence. This musical group’s tunes were the basis for the Mamma Mia soundtrack, after all. Watching this Meryl Streep feature on the big screen wasn’t just a dose of nostalgia for musical theatre geeks, it also offered ABBA fans a chance to bop their heads to familiar tunes.
Even considering that reality, it’s still staggering to consider just how big Mamma Mia was globally back in 2008. Among all 2008 features, it came in eighth worldwide that year. Its significant $439.9 million international haul was the third biggest overseas gross for any movie that year, beating out the likes of Iron Man, Quantum of Solace, and Kung Fu Panda. Heck, its international gross alone surpassed the worldwide grosses of 2008 titles like The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Twilight.
As for other past musical movies, Mamma Mia was the first time in history up to that point that a live-action musical cleared $400 (let alone $500) million worldwide. It dethroned Grease’s $387.4 million global haul from 1978 for the honor of biggest live-action musical movie worldwide circa 2008. Mamma Mia also left 2002’s Chicago’s (which kickstarted the modern musical movie renaissance) $306.7 million global gross in the dust, though that Best Picture winner bested Mamma Mia at the domestic box office.
The box office achievements didn’t end there. Mamma Mia narrowly bested Titanic to become the biggest movie of all-time circa 2008 in the United Kingdom. It also remained the highest-grossing feature helmed by a woman until 2017’s Wonder Woman. Not only did Mamma Mia shatter box office records, but it secured achievements that would take years to topple. That includes its global box office feats in the world of live-action musicals. That particular record can’t help but inspire one question: why did it take so long for Mamma Mia to get dethroned in this subgenre?
How Mamma Mia Held Its Box Office Crown for So Long
Immediately after Mamma Mia, Hollywood and other film industries didn’t necessarily give up on live-action movie musicals. However, they went into a brief box office slump as titles like Nine and Burlesque flopped at the box office. Save for the occasional hit like Les Miserables, Hollywood wouldn’t launch another super lucrative live-action musical until 2016’s La La Land. Mamma Mia might’ve relinquished its crown a lot sooner if the film industry produced new live-action musicals as regularly as it churns out, say, superhero films or musician biopics.
That dearth of new live-action movie musicals also included Disney’s original stable of live-action remakes of animated movies largely eschewing showtunes. Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book referenced (or even had characters briefly croon) recognizable ditties, but they were not musicals. Even 2015’s Cinderella didn’t qualify as a live-action musical. The moment the Mouse House began pumping out live-action musicals like Beauty and the Beast where flesh-and-blood people belted out beloved Disney tunes, Mamma Mia’s box office record was history.
Still, even all these years later, Mamma Mia remains incredibly formidable as a box office phenomenon. It still stands as the fourth-biggest live-action musical in history (Wonka recently surpassed it), with Mamma Mia even narrowly edging out The Little Mermaid’s $569.6 million worldwide haul from last summer. Hollywood’s still hesitant to produce a deluge of live-action musicals, which has ensured Mamma Mia has a long way to go being bonked out of the ten biggest live-action musical movies in history.
Barring a box office cataclysm, Wicked will push Mamma Mia further down the chart of live-action musical movies at the worldwide box office. However, the incredible financial achievements of Mamma Mia will not fade away into yesteryear like the memories underscoring the “Our Last Summer” or “Honey, Honey” musical numbers. Instead, they’ll be stuck in people’s brains forevermore like the melody of “Dancing Queen.”
