Wicked Movie Split into Two Parts

Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights director Jon M. Chu accounted in a statement on Twitter that Wicked would be made into two films rather than one:

“As we prepared the production over the past 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 felt like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for many years.”

Part one is set to premiere in December 2024 and part two will premiere a year later in December 2025.

Given that Wicked on Broadway has a runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes, it is unclear why a slightly longer than average movie wasn’t an option to keep it into a single movie. (And in this day and age, that runtime isn’t much longer than average anymore.) It’s possible that the movie will pull from portions of the book by Gregory McGuire, on which the musical is based. In addition to combining a couple of the book’s characters, the last third of the book was largely excised from the musical. However, there’s a reason these changes were made and that segment of the story was removed in the first place—it was long, slow, and added little to the story. Chu has said he intends to delve more deeply into the characters, which would contribute to the added length.

The movie’s lead roles have been announced—Cynthia Erivo will star as Elphaba and Arianna Grande will be starring as Glinda—but the rest of the cast has yet to be announced.

Photo: Ariana Grande (L) and Cynthia Erivo | CREDIT: TRAE PATTON/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY; UNIVERSAL STAGE PRODUCTION; RICH FURY/GETTY IMAGES