“Wicked” epic opens this week, and I am parking myself in front of a big screen for this blockbuster event. Escaping to a two-hour-and-40-minute movie musical somehow seems like a survival skill these days. Seriously, if I could walk right into this poster, I would never look back.
“Wicked” is practically a miracle, given how it was interrupted first by the pandemic and later by the SAG-AFTRA strike. Now that premiere day is upon us, superfans of the Broadway show “Wicked” eagerly await the cinematic treatment of two witchy women who rose to fame in “The Wizard of Oz,” celebrating its 85th anniversary this year!
As one of the few human beings on planet Earth who has never seen “Wicked” on stage, all the more reason the movie adaptation’s timing could not be better. I need “Wicked” bad. Who doesn’t?
Sophisticated theater fans and movie goers already know that the “Wicked” coming to theaters this week represents part one of a two-part experience. The second part of “Wicked” will premiere November 21, 2025.
Audiences most likely understand too that “Wicked” grew out of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 book “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.” Thus, “Wicked” the movie is a multi-adaptation, primarily from the Broadway musical and secondarily from Maguire’s book.
What also thrills me about the movie is the fact that its star, Cynthia Erivo, is one award shy of an EGOT. She previously earned a Tony, a Grammy, and an Emmy Award stemming from her work in “The Color Purple.” Erivo has also been nominated for not one but two Academy Awards involving her performance playing Harriet Tubman in 2019’s “Harriet.”
No one will be surprised to learn of Erivo’s third Academy nomination for “Wicked.” And if she wins, she will join the exclusive world of EGOT recipients. In other words, Cynthia Erivo belongs to the esteemed category I call “Woman on the Verge.”
