‘Barbenheimer’ Ruled the Box Office. Can ‘Glicked’ Recapture the Magic?

The summer of 2023 was all about “Barbenheimer” — when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened the same day, capturing the public imagination and bringing crowds back to movie theaters that had struggled since the pandemic.

This fall, some fans are hoping to recapture a little of that excitement with a buzzy new movie face-off with its own catchy portmanteau: “Glicked.” (Sorry, “Wickiator.”)

“Wicked,” the first installment of the onscreen adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical, and “Gladiator II,” a swords-and-sandals epic directed by Ridley Scott that picks up more than two decades after the first installment, will both be widely released in theaters on Friday. Seeing the potential for another odd pairing at multiplexes, select corners of the internet have dubbed it “Glicked Day” (pronounced glick-id).

Can they make “Glicked” happen? Will Elphaba green replace Barbie pink? Here are four questions to get you up to speed.

Are the stars of ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ rooting for ‘Glicked’?

Yes. Two movies that open on the same day are typically viewed as competitors, but some hope that, like “Barbenheimer,” this unlikely pairing will pique the interest of moviegoers, which could help both succeed at the box office.

“If it has a similar effect to what it did for ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’ it would be amazing,” Paul Mescal, who stars as Lucius in “Gladiator II,” told Entertainment Tonight. He added that “the films couldn’t be more polar opposite, and it worked in that context previously, so fingers crossed people come out.”