Good news: it seems that we have some news about the upcoming Wicked film adaptation. The adaptation of the musical, not the book by Gregory Maguire, in case you were wondering. Even better news though: we are apparently going to get two films instead of one.

2 Films With 1 Director?

It seems Chu has some great ambitions for this film. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Jon M. Chu (Step Up 2: The Streets, Crazy Rich Asians, In The Heights) himself has taken to Twitter to give us some news about the Wicked film adaptation. Apparently, he realized at some point during production that if he were to try to cram the entirety of the story into a single film, he would do “some real damage to it”. Especially when he started trying to cut songs and trim characters to make them fit into that sole film.

Thus, we’re not getting a single film. We’re getting a pair of them. Yes, the Wicked film adaptation will be a duology. Even better: John M. Chu has set the release dates for both of them. Apparently, the first film will make its debut in December 2024. The second film will premiere a year after that in December 2025. As you can imagine, these films will take a while to emerge. Especially since the release date is so far away, the film has to be in pretty early production at the time of this writing. At the very least though, we do have the knowledge that we’ll be getting a duology to look forward to when we finally see them.

Wicked: Details

"Wicked" musical poster.
And much better than the book, from what I hear of it.

Wicked is a Broadway musical adaptation of the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. It’s effectively dark and edgy published fanfiction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Thankfully, the musical adaptation toned down some of the darkness and edginess, so you probably won’t feel completely worn out and depressed as you would after reading the book.

It’s hard to feel depressed when you have such catchy songs to rock out to.

As for the story of Wicked? Well, it’s basically a prequel to The Wizard of Oz starring the Wicked Witch of the West (aka. Elphaba), and how she became wicked in the first place. The result is a morally complex tale of political intrigue, genocide, and revolution. With Dorothy thrown in at the very last part to end the whole tale in tragedy instead of triumph. Oh, and Glinda the Good Witch becomes a sort of deuteragonist to the story and a very close friend of Elphaba. This becomes a source of both heartwarming moments and dramatic tragedy later on.

The Wicked film adaptations will feature John M. Chu as the director. Cynthia Erivo (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Outsider) as Elphaba will star in the films alongside Ariana Grande (Don’t Look Up) as Glinda. That’s all we know at the moment since the films are so early in production. Tune in later for more news about this duology as we get more info later.

Source: Twitter