Wicked has become a monster hit. The film is a recent Golden Globe winner and has also been announced to have ten Academy Award nominations. Our own Chris Bumbray became enchanted by it despite not being a Broadway musical fan and said in his review, “While I’ll admit that there were a handful of moments where I felt I was missing some kind of in-joke for fans of the play, overall, I had a pretty good time with Jon M. Chu’s Wicked – Part I,” Bumbray wrote. “Certainly, it’s one of the better modern versions of The Wizard of Oz, far more entertaining than Sam Raimi’s largely forgotten Oz: The Great and Powerful. Chu seems to have a knack for movie musicals, and with Universal clearly pumping a pretty penny into it, it feels like the kind of big, broad fantasy epic that should be able to crossover beyond its core audience of Broadway enthusiasts.”
The Hollywood Reporter now reveals that the Wizard of Oz musical is set to stream on Peacock on March 21. Additionally, some extra content will be available. You will get the chance to watch a sing-along version of Wicked, the NBC special Defying Gravity: The Curtain Rises on Wicked, a behind-the-scenes look at the film titled Making Wicked, two featurettes and podcast episodes with director Jon M. Chu and DP Alice Brooks, along with several deleted and extended scenes.
Jonathan Bailey, who plays Fiyero in the film, had recently teased that the sequel will be a more complicated tale. “I think we understand the world and how it works [now],” Bailey said. “I’m really excited for the tonal shift. The world gets heavier and more complicated and there’s just that pumping sense of hope and joy and resilience and all the things that we love about Elphaba’s journey that I can’t wait for.“
The director, Jon Chu, commented on the sequel’s title change from Wicked: Part Two to Wicked: For Good. “Who wants a movie called ‘Wicked: Part Two’?” Chu said. “On the script, it always said, ‘For Good,’ and so it was just a point of like, ‘Do we really want to call this “Part Two”?’ And nobody wants that.” The director added that they didn’t consider any other titles. “I mean, that’s the destination. ‘For Good,’ we know, is like, ‘Where are we going with this movie? Let’s finish this thing,’” Chu explained. The new title takes inspiration from one of the musical’s most well-known songs, a duet between Elphaba and Glinda performed near the end of the musical as a farewell.
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