Feature: WICKED THE MOVIE at Harkins 101

BroadwayWorld guest contributor, David Appleford, gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up to the film, WICKED. Written from the point of view of a theatre fan, the piece is full of details and insights regarding the new film and how it compares to the stage musical (coming to ASU Gammage from March 4th to the 30th, 2025).

Ever since news that a film adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked was in the works, speculation throughout social media and on dedicated Wicked fan-lines ran rampant. Fans were commenting on everything from how the film should look, who should be cast, and in some cases, why the thought of making a film of their beloved musical was a bad idea in the first place.  And if the show's original leads, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, were not cast, then forget the whole thing. Ultimately, every show fan had an opinion to the point where no matter how good the result might be, it could never be good enough. 

One of the most upsetting pieces of news that any theatre purist may eventually hear is this:  Hollywood is turning their favorite Broadway musical into a movie.  Despite the odd exception – In The Heights is a good example - generally speaking, the past several decades were not kind to live theatergoers. Hollywood had repeatedly delivered so many big screen disappointments from such great source material that it was little wonder Ozians (the official name of Wicked fans) were skeptical. And let’s not talk about Rock of Ages or mention Dear Evan Hansen.

However, after several delays in production – the pandemic and lockdowns didn’t help - the Hollywood adaptation of Wicked is finally about to open. As an Ozian and fellow skeptic of studio versions of great Broadway shows, this writer is thrilled to declare that Wicked, as directed by Jon M. Chu, who also directed In The Heights, is quite superb. It may be long – theatre audiences already familiar with the show who know where the story is heading will feel the sag – but director Chu has made several good decisions while transferring this epic tale from the stage to the big screen that should ultimately put theatre skeptics at rest. 

First, something all Ozians should know upfront: though the film is marketed as simply Wicked on the posters, on-screen the film is Wicked: Part 1. This first part tells its half of the story in more than 2 hours and forty-five minutes, while the stage presentation without intermission tells the whole thing in less time: 2 hours and 30 minutes. Part One has all songs from the show either fully intact or expanded, as are many of the dance sequences, but for those who read that Stephen Schwartz had written new songs, film audiences will have to wait to hear them a year from now. They were added to Wicked Part Two scheduled for release on November 21, 2025. Speaking of Schwartz, you may not recognize him under costume and makeup, but look for one of the Wizard’s guards in Emerald City. He’s the one who loudly declares, “The Wizard will see you now!”

If you saw the Broadway musical then bought a copy of the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in the hope of reliving on the page what you enjoyed on stage, it's possible you were surprised. They're not the same. And it's a difficult read. Rewarding, certainly if you're an avid reader. But it's not going to be what you remember as the untold true story of the Witches of Oz. With all the twists and turns Wicked the musical went through during its early development, the finished product was really the other untold true story.

As with all Broadway musicals, the show went through a lot. First, it was a screenplay, but that didn't pan out. Then it was approached as a musical for Broadway, which seemed a better idea. And as producer Marc Platt added each new element - Winnie Holzman for the book, Stephen Schwartz for music and lyrics, Joe Mantello to direct – new things came to be. In early drafts, Glinda hardly showed in the first act, but through a couple of years of rewrites, tryouts, songs written, songs removed, more rewrites and tryouts, plus the involvement of Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel during all the performance development stages, the show took on a life of its own. As writer Holzman said when quoted in the behind-the-scenes book, Wicked: The Grimmerie, “Suddenly, it was all about the friendship between Glinda and Elphaba.” Curiously, in Wicked’s original form, Glinda’s character was hardly seen before intermission.

Since the show's premiere in 2003, first in San Francisco and then on Broadway, the show has made all kinds of theatrical history. At a time when new New York productions were often revivals or jukebox musicals, Wicked was something of a rarity; a new original musical. In the way that the development of the show took on a life of its own from the Maguire novel, so has the production itself. Wicked is so undeniably popular on stage that twenty-three years after its New York opening, the Joe Mantello production has become virtually critic-proof.

Among the many good decisions that director Chu made when transferring the show from stage to screen is the one thing that probably raised the most eyebrows: the cast. In the same way that many theatre-goers can only hear the original voices on cast albums singing those songs, there will always be those who can never even think of Wicked without its original leads. But that was in 2003. Casting pop icon Ariana Grande as Galinda, later to be called Glinda the Good Witch of the North, and London-born internationally renowned singer Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, later to be called the Wicked Witch of the West, turns out to be surprisingly inspiring. 

Grande – full name Ariana Grande-Butera – with her famous four-octave vocal range and her use of the whistle register, the highest register of the human voice (think Mariah Carey), makes Glinda her own.  She’s not only an accomplished singer, her portrayal of the girlie student yet to discover her destiny underlines how good a comic performer she can be. “Something is very wrong,” a genuinely confused Glinda says to herself when a request at college is denied. “I didn’t get my own way.”

And Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba (no stranger to the Broadway stage herself having gained accolades for the revival of The Color Purple in 2015, then later for her screen work having garnered a Best Actress award nomination at the Oscars as Harriet Tubman in the 2019 biopic Harriet), like Grande, is both a skilled actor and a powerful singer. Her excitable rendition of The Wizard and I - “I’m so happy I could… melt!” - with its open-armed, big theatrical finish is a great example of how to present a theatre-based belter on a cinema screen, plus Erivo’s climactic rebel yell at the conclusion of Defying Gravity, which also concludes the film, will give Ozians chills. The name Elphaba was invented by Wicked’s author Gregory Maguire. The man who wrote the original Oz novels never gave the Wicked Witch of the West a first name, so Maguire concocted a new one based on the first letters of the original author’s name, L. Frank Baum – El-Pha-Ba.

Other well-cast performers include Michelle Yeoh, highly effective as Madame Morrible, the Headmistress of Shiz University where both Glinda and Elphaba attend, and Jeff Goldblum, a film actor whose speech inflections and quirky hand and body movements have developed into something, let’s call them, unusual, are here on full Goldblum-esque display.

Alice Brooks’ widescreen cinematography is stuffed with mesmerizing, colorful visuals. And, as you would expect, the CGI visual effects of flying objects are first-class. Interestingly, because of the advanced development of CGI, the faces of the flying monkeys are portrayed with such realistic detail that they look less like the monkeys we knew from the original Wizard of OZ and more like the overgrown, threatening-looking chimps with the serious scowl from the recent Planet of the Apes revivals. And they’re dangerous.

As a live show, since 2003, Wicked has become the epitome of a musical theatre crowd-pleaser. And to give the show’s success some perspective, consider the following; in an industry where almost 80 percent of Broadway shows rarely earn back their investment, and those that do, recouping those high production costs and breaking even can take up to three years. Yet in just 14 months, Wicked earned back its $14 million investment. That was in 2004. It hasn’t stopped playing to packed houses since. 

Theatre audiences won’t respond to the film in the way they do when seeing the show. If you’ve seen the show, particularly locally when the touring production comes to ASU Gammage, you know that the atmosphere in the house resembles the buzz and excitement of a virtual rock concert. The audience doesn’t simply cheer, it roars. Then it roars some more. While standing ovations are rarely the norm in a movie theatre, don’t be surprised if you feel the urge to stand and applaud once the movie screen plunges into dramatic darkness after the wicked witch flies off on her broom with the speed of a missile, heading to the western skies. Wicked Part 1 deserves it.  And believe me, no one is more surprised than I am.

In theaters, starting Friday, November 22nd.

Photo credit to WICKED Official Movie Site: Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba

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