The first full trailer has dropped for Wicked: Part One, marketed as just Wicked. The film is an adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, loosely based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is in turn based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The film is directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) and stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp, Ariana Grande as Glinda Upland, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
While the film itself looks fine, I have to express some pet peeves about the way Wicked is being marketed. For starters, the film continues the age-old trick of hiding that the film is a musical, even though the original Broadway production is one of the most acclaimed musicals of the past two decades. Similar to recent trailers for both Wonka and Mean Girls, the 3:32 minute-long trailer focuses primarily on speaking scenes, with the occasional song excerpt used as background music. Altogether, I would argue that there is no more than 30 seconds of actual singing in this trailer.
Some mismarketing that might have more dire ramifications is de-emphasizing the fact that the musical has been split into two films, presumably to avoid the removal of musical numbers. Both Wicked: Part One and Wicked: Part Two are scheduled to be released exactly one year apart, on November 27, 2024 and November 27, 2025. However, by marketing the film as just Wicked, casual movie-goers might expect the film to be a complete adaptation of the Broadway musical and might get upset that they would have to wait a year for the conclusion to the story.
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