Glinda and Elphaba, respectively.
Photo: Getty Images/Shutterstock
Good news! She’s deaaaaaaaad really alive. Over a years after the production team on the freakishly effective Broadway musical began meeting filmmakers back in 2010, a Wicked film adjustment is lastly in production. While those early conferences apparently consisted of potential directors like Rob Marshall (dull!), Ryan Murphy (but he would want Lea Michele), and J.J. Abrams (the sci-fi boy?), Stephen Daldry was formally hired, with a December 2019 release date held up in 2016. Clearly, this did not occur. Cats got that release date rather, which went excellent. Then, Jon M. Chu of Crazy Rich Asians, Step Up 2: The Streets, and In the Heights fame took over as director in 2021. Ever since, the film has actually been favorably dancing through life, releasing brand-new cast updates routinely and beginning production to be not simply one but two films that in fact exist, against all chances. Listed below, whatever you require to know about these soon-to-be popular movies, coming out Christmas 2024 and 2025.
Yeah, movies. After years of no Wicked movie, we’re getting two Wicked motion pictures. Wickeds? Wicki? Wickeople? “As we prepared this production over the last year, it ended up being increasingly clear that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of WICKED into a single movie without doing some genuine damage to it,” Chu said in a statement posted to social media on April 26, 2022. “So we decided to give ourselves a larger canvas and make not simply one WICKED film however 2!!!!” Okay, so … why? “We discovered it really challenging to get past ‘Defying Gravity’ without a break,” Wicked author Stephen Schwartz said in an email newsletter in June of 2022. “That song is composed specifically to bring a drape down, and whatever scene to follow it without a break simply appeared hugely anti-climactic.” Plus, it was going to be long, and “it needed us cutting or leaving out things that we wished to include and that we believe fans of the program and the story will appreciate.” Look, if it means that the Act 2 opener “No One Mourns the Wicked (Reprise)” will really get a track after it was tacked onto “Thank Goodness” in the original cast recording, then we will take it! Or, as Ben Affleck, king of Boston, would state: That would be wicked.
Well, here’s the goooood newwwwwsss. Casting up until now? Chef’s kiss! Our”Dear Old Shiz”alumni will be played by Tony winner Cynthia Erivo and Grammy winner and theater-geek-at-large Ariana Grande, playing Elphaba and Glinda (formerly Galinda), respectively. Likewise in the cast are Bridgerton star and Olivier Award winner Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero and Tony candidate Ethan Slater as Boq. Jeff Goldblum was reported to be in “final talks” to play the Wizard in October 2022 by Range, however that casting has not officially been announced. Madame Morrible, Nessarose, and a couple of others are still TBD, however Catherine O’Hara can sing, so we don’t actually comprehend what the holdup is on that first one.
The movies with be appearing on Christmas Days. The first will levitate on December 25, 2024, and the second will be a kindness on Christmas 2025. It’s only 2 short years prior to we get a Wicked movie, and we may as well begin screaming about it now. AAAAAAAAH!