Everything we know about the ‘Wicked’ movie(s)

Ready to defy gravity?

Fans of Broadway musical Wicked (itself adapted from a Gregory Maguire novel) have been waiting years for the stage show to get its big-screen adaptation. We’ll call it wonderful that it’s finally happening. A Wicked movie was said to be in the works, with plenty of starts and stops, including a coronavirus delay, from the time it became a Broadway hit in 2003.

There were a lot of thoughts as to the right approach — pitches for an animated version, hopes that original Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth would reprise their roles. But now, 20 years after it first enchanted theater audiences, Wicked is ready to work its magic anew.

Wicked is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, telling the “true story” of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, and her school days when she first befriended popular girl, G(a)linda. The musical follows their journey from mutually loathing roommates at Shiz University to unlikely friends to political enemies as the Wizard and his cronies vilify Elphaba and elevate Glinda. All the while, the two women fall for the same man, party boy Fiyero.

With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman, the musical became an instant classic. Schwartz and Holzman are adapting the script for the screen, and their original Broadway producer, Marc Platt, is also producing the film version.

Here’s everything we know about the Wicked film adaptation.

Who’s directing Wicked?

Universal needed a musical wizard to helm their long-gestating adaptation. They found him in Jon M. Chu, the director of the big-screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights and executive producer of Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration.

How many Wicked movies will there be?

A tale of friendship, Wicked is a firm reminder that two is better than one. The filmmakers and Universal are taking that quite literally, dividing the musical into two movies.

“As we prepared the production over the last year, it became impossible to wrestle the story ofWickedinto a single film without doing some real damage to it,” Chu wrote in a statement he shared on Twitter. “As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just oneWickedmovie but two! With more space, we can tell the story ofWickedas it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.”

Stephen Schwartz has previously intimated that there will be new songs written for the film. The stage show boasts a standard two-hour and forty-five minute running time, while the Gregory Maguire novel on which it’s based is significantly denser.

Still, what exactly will fill the entirety of two whole movies remains unclear. One thing we can assume is that the first movie will follow its theatrical predecessor and end its first half with the show-stopping number “Defying Gravity.”

What is the Wicked release date?

The first entry of the Wicked films will debut on Nov. 27, 2024, moved up from a previous December release date. The second movie will remain a holiday treat, slated to hit theaters on December 25, 2025. We’ll be hanging pink and green garlands for Christmas.

Who will play Galinda and Elphaba?

Fan speculation over who would take on Elphaba’s green skincare routine and Galinda’s pink popularity raged for years. But in the end, Chu chose a Broadway chanteuse and a pop star to anchor his musical extravaganza.

Tony winner Cynthia Erivo (Widows, Harriet) will portray Elphaba, while Grammy winner Ariana Grande is going blonde to play Galinda. Erivo nabbed Tony gold for her breakthrough performance as Celie in the revival of The Color Purple, while Grande has been campaigning to play Glinda for over half of her life (she sang “The Wizard and I” on NBC’s 15th-anniversary special).

Grande even received the blessing of original Galinda, Kristin Chenoweth. Meanwhile, Erivo is already plotting how she’ll deliver Elphaba’s signature song, “Defying Gravity.” She previously told EW, “I’ve been listening to it, and I’ve sung it. I kind of just go with it, naturally. There’s the temptation to push and to do too much with it. I don’t know that that’s what my method will be. I think my method will be to communicate the meaning of the song as much as I can.”

In April 2023, Chu shared a first look at Erivo and Grande as Elphaba and Glinda. “You weren’t told the whole story,” he wrote on Twitter. “What happens when you veer off the Yellow Brick Road? Here is your very FIRST LOOK of #WickedMovie…currently in production in Oz.”

The images were criticized for their extreme darkness, punctuated only by a green landscape outside Elphaba’s window that matches her distinctive skin tone and the hot pink of Glinda’s dress.

Fans got to see a bit more of the two leads when Universal premiered footage of the film at this year’s CinemaCon. “They are born to play these roles,” said Universal Pictures Chairman Donna Langley on the CinemaCon stage. “They are brilliant and matched by an equally brilliant cast.”

Who else is in the cast?

The two witches aren’t the only actors who’ve had their lives changed for good. Chu has also announced his Fiyero(ooooooo), Madam Morrible, Boq, and Nessarose.

Jonathan Bailey is Fiyero

For the man who makes Elphaba feel wicked, Chu needed a true romantic hero, and he couldn’t do much better than Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey. Having made audiences swoon as the Netflix series’ Anthony Bridgerton, he’ll now put his musical theater credentials to use as the fixed point at the heart of the show’s love triangle.

Leaked images from the set have showcased Bailey in Fiyero’s captain of the guard uniform, which he wears opposite Grande’s Glinda during the musical number, “Thank Goodness.” But no official shots of Fiyero have been released yet.

Michelle Yeoh is Madam Morrible

Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once) is attached to play Madam Morrible, the headmistress of Shiz University and a manipulative advisor to the Wizard.

Yeoh has described her role as a risky proposition, pivoting from her more dramatic and action-based work. “I’m trying something new right now — filming Jon Chu’sWickedmovie, which will be my first musical,” Yeoh said. “It’s very exciting, and I can’t wait for you all to see it. It was a risk, but you will never know which doors will open for you unless you try them all.”

Jeff Goldblum is the Wizard

Then there’s the con man himself, the Kansas carnival huckster turned political leader, the Wizard, and he’ll be played by Jeff Goldblum, who we have no doubt will infuse him with the character’s requisite smarminess.

Goldblum told Jimmy Kimmel that working on Wicked is reviving his childhood fear of witches. “I shouldn’t talk about it, but I was shooting one day and I found myself tearing up in fear,” he said. “A childhood fear came back to me and I told Cynthia Erivo, I said, ‘You know, I’m remembering my first dream that I ever had.'”

“My first dream was that I was tied to a tree stump and a witch — because I’d seenSnow Whitealso with a very scary queen witch — had tied me to this tree stump and I thought was going to chop off my head,” he recalled. “I must’ve been four or something like that, and she went, ‘peaches, peaches.'”

He also noted that he’s still afraid to watch 1939’s The Wizard of Oz because of the Wicked Witch and even recently failed at showing it to his own children because he had to turn it off out of fear. “Witches scare me! And I showed them that movie and we didn’t get through it,” he concluded. “The Witch is terrifying. Margaret Hamilton. Terrifying. You should see our witches, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Very good.”

What about the other characters?

Newcomer Marissa Bode will portray Elphaba’s sister Nessarose, called Nessa for short. Like her character, Bode uses a wheelchair. She will feature opposite Ethan Slater, best known for his portrayal of SpongeBob in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical, as Boq, a munchkin who dates Nessa.

SNL star Bowen Yang will also appear in a small role as Pfannee, a classmate of Galinda and Elphaba at Shiz.

Other announced cast include Bronwyn James (Harlots), Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman), newcomer Aaron Teoh, and Colin Michael Carmichael (Hot Fuzz).

When can I see a trailer?

Considering that Wicked‘s release date is still over a year away, it will probably be a few turns of the witch’s hourglass before we get to see even a teaser trailer. But that doesn’t mean some footage hasn’t already been showcased. At CinemaCon in April 2023, Universal debuted the very first glimpse of Wickedscreening roughly edited footage to a crowd of exhibitors and press.

The footage contained glimpses at most of the major players and opened with a bigger look at a white-haired Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible. She tells Elphaba, “Try again, eyes shut, and picture it,” as she tries to teach Elphaba how to harness her powers. Chu promised that Oscar-winner Yeoh “brings a whole new dynamic to Madame Morrible.”

Not only did attendees get a glimpse at the cast (and hear some incredible vocals from Erivo and Grande), but they were also introduced to the vast world of Emerald City, with Chu noting the movie did not include CGI or blue screen and that it’s “a fully immersive experience.” He says, “Emerald City is a world that can only be realized on film.”

While it will likely be ages before anyone else gets to see the world of Oz, the description of the footage alone is enchanting. “This movie has everything: giant musical numbers, big action pieces. And using a classic story you all know, the Wizard of Oz,” Chu teased, “and at the end of the day, it’s actually not about those things. It’s about change and [how] it’s necessary for things to get better.”

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