Wicked is one of the most famous and successful musicals of all time, with iconic songs like “Defying Gravity,” “Popular,” and “For Good” transcending beyond musical theater. Based on the 1995 fantasy novel by Gregory Maguire, itself inspired by The Wizard of Oz (both the movie and the original novel), Wicked is the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West and her doomed friendship with Glinda the Good Witch. Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth headlined the original Broadway cast, which won three Tonys and a Grammy. I have no hard evidence for this, but anecdotally, Wicked was one of the bucket list shows for young musical theater lovers to see live in the mid-2000s and early-2010s.
When you think obsessive theater kids, your family’s big New York City trip to see Broadway musicals, or songs heavily featured in Glee, Wicked is up there in bright marquee lights.
… and yet, most of the trailers for the highly anticipated movie version do not emphasize this at all. In fact, the most recent trailer — which is more of a brief teaser to announce that tickets are on sale — is the only one so far where the characters are actually seen singing. And even then, it’s edited in a way that when the music voiceover starts to sync up with the actors singing on screen, it cuts away.
Lately, there’s been a lot of movie musical trailers that go out of their way to hide the fact that they’re musicals. Remember the trailers for Wonka, which didn’t even so much as hint at the fact that Timothée Chalamet sings a whole song while milking a giraffe? The marketing for the Mean Girls musical and the adaptation of the Broadway version of The Color Purple barely included the music.
But it’s particularly egregious for Wicked, because it’s not just a musical — it’s the musical.
Many of the earlier trailers really tried to make Wicked look like a serious, gritty dark fantasy about the origins of the Wicked Witch (when has that gone well?). And sure, there’s the argument that there is the book and this movie could be based on that. But c’mon — you don’t cast Ariana Grande as Glinda if she’s not going to sing.
Anyway, at the very least, this new teaser highlights some of the popular (ha) songs from Part 1! Oh, that’s another thing: Wicked is the first of two parts, another detail they’ve been playing coy about in the marketing for some reason. The movie is directed by Jon M. Chu and stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, with Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Ethan Slater as Boq, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard himself.
Wicked flies into theaters on Nov. 22, with early IMAX screenings starting Nov. 20.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/movies/463672/wicked-trailer-musical-singing
