Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo land lead roles in Wicked movie

Wicked, a musical that tells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the perspectives of Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, debuted on Broadway way back in 2003, and was an instant smash success. We’re talking Tonys, a Grammy, merch aplenty, and over a billion dollars in box office revenue. It’s big.

So why did it take so long to make it into a movie? Well, generally Broadway producers are loathe to give away screen rights to their shows, since they fear that having a theatrical version of a play will diminish interest in the stage version. (I think you could argue that it would actually increase interest, but that’s another story.) In any case, the Wicked movie is finally happening, with In The Heights director Jon M. Chu at the helm.

And now, Deadline reports that Chu has cast his two leads: Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo will play Elphaba, the woman who will become the Wicked Witch of the West; and pop star Ariana Grande will be Glinda. In this version of the story, they meet at college and go from hating each other to being best friends to eventually finding themselves on opposite sides of a war that divides all of Oz.

When does the Wicked movie come out?

Elphaba and Glinda were originally played on Broadway by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, and it raised their profiles considerably. Erivo and Grande seem like solid choices for the parts. Erivo is a veteran of both the stage and screen who has won both a Grammy and a Tony for her singing. And while Grande may not have quite as high-brow an acting resume, she certainly knows her way around a set; she broke out on the Disney channel show Victorious back in the early 2010s. And I don’t mean this as shade, but she kinda has the shiny veneer and silky voice to effectively play a somewhat shallow social climber like Glinda.

There no word on when the Wicked movie will be in theaters as of yet, but filming is expected to start sometime in 2022.

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