‘Wicked’ stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo share first images of movie musical

These Instagram photos are gonna be popular.

On Sunday, “Wicked” movie musical stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo shared the first looks of their famed characters in the upcoming two-part film. Director Jon M. Chu posted the same photos on Twitter.

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“You weren’t told the whole story. What happens when you veer off the Yellow Brick Road? Here is your very FIRST LOOK of #WickedMovie … currently in production in Oz,” Chu wrote in a timed break along with the Instagram photos.

In the films, which will be released on consecutive Christmas Days in 2024 and 2025, Grande plays Glinda, the role originated on Broadway by Kristin Chenoweth. 

Opposite Grande as Elphaba is Erivio. That role originated on Broadway by Idina Menzel. Both actresses were Tony nominees for their work, with Menzel winning Best Actress in a Musical over her co-star.

With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman, “Wicked” is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” which recontextualizes the Wicked Witch of the West for a modern audience. The musical is a blockbuster hit on Broadway: it’s currently the fourth-longest-running Broadway show of all time.

A “Wicked” movie has been in development for decades. The adaptation was originally set to be a standalone film, but Chu revealed last year that the narrative required two full-length features instead.

“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,” Chu wrote in a statement last year. “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.”

The official photos of the co-leads in character come after videos and aerial pictures of the “Wicked” set leaked online last week.

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