Wicked. It’s a new movie that quickly gained popularity, but is it a hit or a miss? It cost them 145 MILLION US DOLLARS to make the movie, but was it worth it?
HITS
Wicked is an exceptionally great movie which gained popularity very quickly. They made $114 million US dollars from 3,888 theatres over one weekend. It’s not a surprise that Wicked is such a big hit as it’s a recreation of the famous theatrical musical “Wicked” inspired by a fan favourite movie “, Wizard of Oz”. Popular songs from the theatrical musical have also been an excellent reason for their immense popularity, as many of the songs have been included in the new movie. The advantage of the musical being recreated into a film is that there is a ready-made audience, and it will make it easier for their tickets to sell out.
Another reason Wicked is such a popular movie is the cast. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo played the two main characters, Glinda and Elphaba. The rest of the cast includes Jonathan Bailey (Fiyero Tigelaar), Ethan Slater (Boq Woodsman), Jeff Goldblum (The Wizard of Oz), Peter Dinklage (Dr. Dillamond), and many more incredible actors.
MISS
Although this movie is excellent for many reasons, it has some downsides due to the fandom and the ‘behind-the-scenes’.
The fandom is very concerned for the actors Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who rapidly lost significant weight while filming Wicked. Nobody knows what happened behind the scenes that caused these fantastic actors to lose this much weight.
Another very chaotic thing that happened within the fandom upset Cynthia Erivo. A fan decided to recreate the new movie poster to make it more similar to the original poster, but that meant they had to cover up Cynthia Erivo’s eyes, which is why she got upset. In response to this recreation, Cynthia posted a tweet / X saying, “The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real-life human being who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer…because, without words, we communicate with our eyes. Our poster is a homage, not an imitation; to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.” In the identical Tweet / X, Cynthia also mentioned the AI-generated video of her and her co-worker, Ariana Grande, fighting, to which she replied, “This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen, equal to that awful AI of us fighting, equal to people posting derogatory comments. None of this is funny. None of it is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us.” Ariana Grande also mentioned the AI video: “I think it’s very complicated because I find AI so conflicting and troublesome sometimes, but I think it’s just kind of such a massive adjustment period.”
The movie Wicked is a hit, but the behind the scenes are a miss. What do you think?
Emilija J
Boston High School Newsroom