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, twenty 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.

A sentimental man

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.

Think of what we could do…

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 of Wicked into 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 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.”

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 its based is significantly denser.

Still, what exactly will fill the entirety to 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.”

Two short days in the Emerald City

The first entry of the Wicked films will debut on December 25, 2024, and the second movie will be released exactly a year later, on December 25, 2025. We’ll be hanging pink and green garlands for Christmas next year.

We’re perfect together

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.”

Dear Old Shiz

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.

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.

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. 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.

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).

Related content: