Ariana Grande's 'Wicked' Musical Movie: Release Date, Cast, More

Ariana Grande is sure to be pop-u-lar! The “thank u, next” singer will star as Glinda in the upcoming movie musical, Wicked.

The Universal film is based off the Tony-winning Broadway show of the same name, which followed the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. The story tells the story of the interconnected lives of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch, long before Dorothy’s adventures in Wizard of Oz.

Ariana was cast as Glinda back in November 2021, along with Tony-winning actress Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. The casting news fulfilled the pop singer’s life long dreams after she tweeted in 2011, “Loved seeing Wicked again… amazing production! Made me realize again how badly I want 2 play Glinda at some point in my life! #DreamRole.” She really manifested that!

In April 2022, it was announced that the film would be separated into two parts, one being released in December 2024 and the other the following year. Director Jon M. Chu explained he wanted to do the musical right, not wanting to cut down on too many musical numbers and important characters. Chu explained that the creative team decided to give themselves “a bigger canvas” by splitting the adaptation into two separate movies.

“With more space, we can tell the story of WICKED as it was meant to be told,” he explained. It was announced that Chu would take charge of the project back in February 2021, much to fans’ delight. As the mastermind behind Crazy Rich Asians and the film adaptation of Broadway’s In the Heights, we’re super excited to see what the director has in store for Wicked, which has been a project 10 years in the making!

“I think it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before,” Erivo told Entertainment Tonight in February 2022. “I think we’re going to enjoy the magic of it. We’re going to try and put our own spin on what we know already and show you a story about two women [who] are sisters.”

Scroll through our gallery for everything we know about the upcoming movie musical, Wicked.

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All Energy Into Glinda

In a YouTube video from May 2022, the singer explained she’s putting all of her time and energy into Glinda, so she won’t be focusing on any new music for a while.

“I went pretty hard getting ready, and now… Thank goodness, literally the most incredible gift of my entire life is, you know, this role that I’ve adored since I’m 10 years old,” she explained. “And that is going to have every piece of me, every minute, every ounce of my heart, my time, my soul, my everything that I can give it, so my hands are quite full with a lot of other thrillifying work at the moment, and [R.E.M. Beauty] being a part of it.”

“I’m spending all of my time with Glinda,” Grande explained of the reason she’s not currently working on new music. “I just was not ready.”

Half Way Point

Ariana announced that Wicked had reached the half way point of filming in a heartfelt Instagram post in April 2023.
“Savoring every millisecond left with my Galinda (although she’ll be with me irrevocably, forever),” she wrote as her caption. “She shows me so many new things every day,” Grande wrote in a lengthy post on Instagram, penning a love letter to the experience of taking on her dream role alongside Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba. She stands beneath a sky-spanning rainbow in the post with her dog Toulouse.”
“I am so grateful, I don’t know what to do or say… To be here in Oz where everyday is a life changing one… To be feeling, learning and growing so much at such a disarming speed… To feel so much love around me, to begin each day before the sun is up and to end after it set,” she continued.
“To hold my brilliant twin flame / sister Cynthia’s beautiful, green hands every day… To work in the safest, most beautiful and loving, biggest-yet-most-intimate/tiny-feeling spaces…”