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Wicked, the wildly successful Broadway musical that made global stars of its leads Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, is finally heading to the big screen. Set to play Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West? None other than Grammy-winning superstar Ariana Grande, and Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award recipient Cynthia Erivo. And accompanying them as their dashing love interest Fiyero? Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey, of course.
Grande and Erivo revealed their news in November 2021 with matching Instagram posts, featuring the flowers they’d exchanged and pictures of them FaceTiming each other. “Thank goodness,” wrote Grande, referencing the name of the song that opens the musical’s second act. Meanwhile, Erivo quoted Glinda, writing, “Pink goes good with green” (a nod to Glinda’s favorite shade and the emerald hue of Elphaba’s skin). Bailey’s announcement came almost a year later, on September 21, 2022, via the big-screen adaptation’s director Jon M. Chu. (Chu previously helmed Crazy Rich Asians and proved his ability to take a beloved musical seamlessly from stage to screen with In the Heights.) And if that wasn’t enough, in late 2022, two more A-listers became involved: Michelle Yeoh, who’s been cast as Madame Morrible, the headmistress of Crage Hall at Shiz University, and Jeff Goldblum, who is playing the Wizard himself.
Also joining them? Peter Dinklage, who provides the voice of the talking goat and professor Dr. Dillamond; Broadway’s SpongeBob Squarepants Ethan Slater as Boq, a Munchkin student; Marissa Bode as Elphaba’s sister Nessarose; Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James as two of Glinda’s friends, Pfannee and ShenShen; and Keala Settle as a new character created for the film, Miss Coddle.
It’s been a long time coming for fans who’ve been hoping for a cinematic version of the witches’ exploits in the land of Oz—the project first entered development in 2004, not long after the show’s debut—but they’ll be amply rewarded. In April 2022, Chu added that the musical would be split into two films, with the first arriving in cinemas on November 27, 2024, and the second on November 26, 2025. “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 said in a statement. “With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprises to the journeys for these beloved characters.” Composer Stephen Schwartz, who penned the original music and lyrics, and Winnie Holzman, who wrote the dialogue, are collaborating on the screenplays for both productions, while three-time Oscar nominee Marc Platt is producing.
On April 16, 2023, Chu unveiled the first stills from the set—shadowy shots of both Erivo and Grande in costume as Elphaba and Glinda, the former straddling a gnarly broomstick and the latter gliding up a flight of stairs in a cotton candy-pink ballgown.
Then, on February 12, 2024, came a first look, after which followed a making-of segment and the magical first trailer on May 15—and it’s a blast.
As we count down to the first film’s release, revisit Grande’s rendition of “The Wizard and I”—performed live as part of a TV special marking Wicked’s 15th anniversary in 2018—and recall when, more than a decade ago, she tweeted about wanting to play Glinda at some point in her life. Some dreams, it seems, really do come true.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
