(SPOT.ph) The "post-pandemic" film industry gave us some of the most memorable movie musicals of the 2020s, including Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, Jon M. Chu's In the Heights, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tick, Tick...Boom! And after much waiting (e.g. since Universal first reported the upcoming production in 2016), it was announced by Chu that Wicked will be released as a two-part movie musical in December 2024 and in December 2025.
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"Here's what happened: as we prepared this production over the last year, it became increasingly clear that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing some real damage to it. As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like a fatal compromises [sic] to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. So 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 of these beloved characters," said Chu on Twitter. "Sent from my OzPhone," his caption quipped.
Wicked, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and theatrical adaptation by Winnie Holzman, is based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. The whole thing is a retelling of the tale and characters once created by L. Frank Baum in the children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It follows the unlikely but profound friendship between two sorcery students—popular girl Glinda and green-skinned girl Elphaba.
The movie musical adaption is starring Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, news that was revealed through both the artists' Instagram posts on November 5, 2021.
"Cynthia, Ariana, and I—and all of the cast and crew—pledge to create nothing less than an experience that honors its foundation for all the fans who've waited for this movie, and to offer a thrilling, fantastical world full of dynamic characters that invite in those who are unfamiliar," Chu added.
Some of Wicked's most popular songs are "Defying Gravity," "For Good," and "One Short Day."
An international production of Wicked, which starred Carly Anderson and Jacqueline Hughes, was staged at The Theatre at Solaire in Parañaque City in February 2017. Prior to this, the touring cast also visited Manila during a Cultural Center of the Philippines staging in January 2014.