Wicked Movie: Trailer, Release Date, Cast, and Everything You Need to Know
Ready for one of the most iconic villain origin stories to hit the big screen? The Wicked movie is officially on the way.
The Tony-winning Broadway musical — a Wizard of Oz prequel based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West — is finally heading to theaters next holiday season. Wicked is being adapted for not one, but two major motion pictures under Universal, and more and more confirmed details about the films are slowly trickling in.
Wicked first debuted on Broadway in 2003, where Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel originated the roles of Glinda and Elphaba. The interconnected story of the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West takes place long before Dorothy drops into the wonderful land of Oz. In fact, the prequel details the unlikely friendship between the two then-aspiring witches in their youth before they became enemies, changing the fate of their lives, and Oz, for good.
In case you haven’t heard by now, mega popstar Ariana Grande and Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo will lead the upcoming films as witches Glinda and Elphaba, respectively, and will be directed by Jon M. Chu of Crazy Rich Asians and In The Heights fame.
So many developments have occurred since the Wicked movie musical adaptation was first announced, so we’ve gathered everything you need to know into one guide: from the buzzy cast (including Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero) to adaptation differences and song teasers (from “Defying Gravity” to ”For Good” and “Popular”) to the (multiple) release date changes to the special Super Bowl 2024 sneak peek at the film. Pro tip: Click an arrowed topic below to head straight there.
When were the Wicked movies first announced?
The initial news of Universal’s Wicked movie adaptation broke in 2016, with its original theatrical release set for December 20, 2019. Evidently, there have since been delays that pushed the film to its current 2024 date. But on April 26, 2022, Chu shared news that clarified the reason behind the long wait.
“As we prepared the production over the last year, it became impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing some real damage to it,” he wrote in a statement posted on X (formerly 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 one Wicked movie but two! With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.” Chu’s two-part announcement delighted some fans while downright annoying others.
On February 11, 2024, the day the first trailer dropped, Wicked producer Marc Platt defended the decision to split up the movies to Vanity Fair. “We didn’t want to end up making one four-hour movie and then cutting out songs. We want to satisfy the fans of the musical,” said Platt. “Film allows you to create a place and a time — a university like Shiz, an extraordinary Emerald City governor’s mansion. There’s so much more to explore.”
Have the Wicked movies finished filming?
On December 7, 2022, Grande, Erivo, and Chu confirmed filming on the movie adaptations had begun via several Instagram Stories posts. In one post, the director shared a Wicked-themed drawing from his daughter “to commemorate the first day of shooting.”
Production temporarily shut down amid the SAG-AFTRA strike this past July. At the time, Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz confirmed to Variety that there were only 10 days left to complete filming parts one and two. Chu also shared an update during the strike, assuring fans that the “release date shouldn’t be affected” on X: “Not done yet. Just paused until the strike is over and we can finish the last pieces of the movie. We were only a few days away from being done so we were SO close. It’s been very painful to put a halt to it all but we will be back! And we will finish properly strong when the time is right.”
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