After becoming a smash hit, and playing on Broadway now for over two decades, it would have been easy to make a rushed, condensed version of Wicked that failed to live up to the Tony-winning hype of its show counterpart.
I still remember hearing about the concept for the first time when I was in high school. Think: The Wizard of Oz, only retold from the Wicked Witch’s point of view, with Dorothy and the Wizard as the bad guys. My mom saw it with some girlfriends in the city, and came back raving about how much I would adore it.
As an Oz-obsessed youth, seeing this show on Broadway became everything to me. It wasn’t until 2006 that I ended up going and it was everything I had hoped. Wicked was my Hamilton.
All these years later, Elphaba has still stayed in the pop culture conversation; the possibility of a movie adaptation constantly fleeted in and out of existence. At long last, Wicked arrives on the big screen just in time for the 2024 holidays.
Split into two parts, John M. Chu’s colorful extravaganza stands tall as one of the best movie musicals of the 2020s, alongside recent home-run titles West Side Story, The Color Purple, Wonka, and tick, tick … Boom! Boasting incredible vocals, visual decadence and intimate character moments, Wicked truly may change musical cinema … for good.
