Fans Speculate Why ‘Wicked’ Moves Up Release Date
The upcoming Wicked movie will now come out earlier than announced. The first Wicked film will be released on November 22, 2024, five days earlier than the previously announced November 27 release.
In April of 2022, the announcement about the upcoming film was made. The musical will be split into two separate films. The Wicked movies star Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda, Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, Ethan Slater as Boq, Peter Dinklage as Doctor Dillamond, Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard, and Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible. The cast also includes Bowen Yang, Keala Settle, Aaron Teoh, and Colin Michael Carmichael.
The Wicked films are directed by Jon M. Chu, who has worked on In the Heights film adaptation, Step Up All In, and Crazy Rich Asians. Original composer Stephen Schwartz will adapt the screenplay with Winnie Holzman, who wrote the book for the musical, and producer of the musical, Marc Platt, is set to produce the film. The first part of Wicked will be released on November 22, 2024, with the second part set to be released on December 25, 2025.
Earlier this year, the first full trailer was released.
Wicked Avoiding Moana 2 Release
Wicked’s original release date of Nov. 27 was set on the same day as Disney’s Moana 2. Now, Wicked will get a jump on the Thanksgiving holiday, but it will still be competing with Gladiator II. It’s worth mentioning that there’s much less overlap in the audience demographic for both of these films.
This is the second major date shift for Wicked: Part One, initially on the calendar for Dec. 25. But Universal moved the film to Thanksgiving to dodge Christmas releases like Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
How Do Fans Feel About the Change
Many fans were hoping to enjoy a double feature much like the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer. At the time several fans coined the release of the two films as “Barbieheimer.” With the Wicked date change, one fan pointed out that fans are no longer getting that opportunity. “Guess we’re not doing Moaned,” one person shared on Reddit.
Someone mentioned how well Inside Out 2 did with box office sales saying, “They saw Inside Out 2 make a billion dollars in three weekends and gave up the date.”
