Since it was first announced in December 2012, the feature film adaptation of the wildly popular musical Wicked, itself an adaptation of the incredibly strange Gregory Maguire novel, has been beset by delays. First, there were eight years in development hell, easily enough to kill most films. Then there was a pandemic. Nearly a decade had passed since the initial announcement by the time Jon M. Chu took over as director in 2021, fresh off In The Heights and Crazy Rich Asians. By the end of the year, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were cast as the green and pink protagonists, respectively. In April 2022, Chu posted a note sent from his “OzPhone” on Twitter that read, in part, “As we prepared the production over the last year, it became 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 began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one 'Wicked' movie but two! With more space, we can tell the story of 'Wicked' as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.
In December 2022, filming for the now-two movies finally began. Seven months later, the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike brought it to a screeching halt. And now, Wicked is finally almost here, nearly 12 years to the month since producer Marc Platt said, “It's still a ways away. I would expect in the near future to begin the process of development. There will be a movie.”
There is, indeed, a movie—two, actually, though Wicked: Part One’s advertising team seems to be following in the footsteps of other secret franchises and deliberately downplaying the film’s inevitable cliffhanger. But come Friday, we will all get to see the first installment of a project that, depending on how you look at it, has been either a decade or a century in the making. Perhaps all that history is why the film clocks in at 160 minutes—just five minutes shy of the original runtime of the full stage production, which includes an intermission. It’s a suitably bloated length for a film whose marketing campaign feels just as interminable.
I’m not the first to note just how damn long the Wicked marketing campaign has been operating at a saturation level somewhere between "opening week" and "presidential campaign." There have been Wicked-themed 7-Elevens, Wicked-themed Stanley-brand cups, Wicked-themed dolls, Wicked-themed eyeshadow palettes (from Grande’s brand r.e.m., of course), Wicked-themed Crocs, and so much more.
And then there are Erivo and Grande, who have been trotted out at every possible opportunity for what feels like a year now. There they are, in one minute crying together like theater kids at their last tech rehearsal, and in the next re-enacting famous memes with Jimmy Fallon. Now, they’re with Kelly Clarkson talking about their matching tattoos. Here, they’re being obliquely referenced in countless posts about the society-wide retrenchment of thinness in the post-Ozempic era. Meanwhile, they keep singing and singing and singing.
It’s impossible to exist dead center in the public eye for as long as Erivo and Grande have without controversies flaring every so often. This week, it was their giggling reaction to a 10-year-old fashion influencer who complimented Erivo's nails in a patois reminiscent of New York from Flavor of Love. The seven-second clip quickly went viral on the zombie island that remains of Twitter and just as quickly devolved into spats over the use of black vernacular by non-black children who grow up on the internet. In October, it was Erivo’s self-admittedly disproportionate response to a fanmade poster that she, at the time, claimed “degraded” her. “I probably should have called my friends, but it’s fine,” she told Entertainment Tonight. There’s been surprisingly little chatter about the murky origins of Grande’s relationship with Wicked co-star Ethan Slater, but I doubt that peace will last given how long this press campaign is likely to drag, through next year’s Oscars and the subsequent release of Wicked: Part 2 in November 2025.
After the pink fever dream that was Barbenheimer, I’d seriously doubted whether any marketing campaign could wear on me as thoroughly. But at least Barbenheimer had the faintest whiff of authenticity about it. Yes, the studios ultimately won, but the campaign’s success clearly wasn’t ready-made. The omnipresence of Wicked, with its carefully elided real running time of five hours, feels much more artificially predetermined. That the release, which hasn’t even happened yet, only marks the halfway point of this campaign fills me with the sort of dread I usually only experience when waiting longer than 20 minutes for a train.
As I watch these two women sing and cry and then cry and sing, I can’t help questioning the utility of any of this. Wicked benefits from two of the most powerful fandoms—Arianators and theater kids. The hard sell feels unnecessary and exhausting. Even worse is the toll that it seems to be taking on Erivo and Grande. This level of ongoing exposure wasn’t always a part of the fame bargain. Being on near-constant display for close to 18 months after a year of production inevitably leads to burnout. But consider, as well, the sheer inanity of the modern promotional cycle.
In a press junket interview with Out, Erivo was tasked with gracefully responding to the comment, "I've seen this week people are taking the lyrics of 'Defying Gravity' and really holding space with that and feeling power in that." With the sort of wet-eyed look of a drunk girl in the club bathroom, she said, "I didn't know that was happening. That's really powerful. That's what I wanted." Next to her, Grande nodded gravely, also on the verge of tears. She stroked Erivo's finger. Erivo whispered, "I didn't know that was happening." The entire interaction felt like something out of a k-hole.
Who is this for? What are we doing here? And to what end? For decades, movies have been made and promoted and even inducted into the cultural canon without all this content. Judy Garland never had to mug for a YouTube thumbnail while tasting spicy chicken wings. Diana Ross wasn't playing charades with milquetoast comedians. They were busy people! And so are we.
