Fans got their first look at Ariana Grande playing Glinda in the first trailer for Wicked, the film of the stage musical which will hit cinemas in November.
Jon Chu’s adaptation also casts Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp, who later becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, but is here just a magical student at Shiz University.
As per the 1995 story, the film will build on the friendship between Glinda and Elphaba as they navigate campus life and their parallel destinies for good and wickedness.
Jeff Goldblum is cast as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz while Michelle Yeoh is Madame Morrible, the Dean of the university.
Wicked will be the first of two films, the second set to come out in November, 2025.
Here are five takeaways from the trailer.
1. The campus relationship will form the crux of the narrative
A large portion of the trailer is spent at Shiz University and shows the pair going through magic lessons, Harry Potter-style.
A prom-like scene, as ever, seems to fall at a pivotal point in the narrative and might make or break the Elphaba / Glinda friendship.
2. There will be flying on broomsticks
The film appears to climax with Elphaba accepting her destiny as the “wicked” witch by taking a broomstick.
But this is not Anakin putting on the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars as we’re shown the corruption at bay within Oz in the three-minute trailer.
3. The score will be enormous but we don’t hear any singing
Having a singer of Grande’s calibre as the co-lead in a musical suggests only one thing but we never, in the trailer, see her sing.
Erivo is also a respected singer but we don’t hear her. Nevertheless, the music is big, powerful and swirling - suggesting this will be an epic one. Defying Gravity and Popular are both original numbers that are teased here.
4. We don’t see anything from act two
The trailer seems to be clearly dividing the two films between the stage musical’s act one and two. We don’t see anything from what is, on stage, the second act - showing where Cho has drawn the line.
5. There is a talking goat
CGI is a luxury that cannot be replicated on stage. The trailer shows Peter Dinklage as Doctor Dillamond, the four-legged history professor.
We also get to see new characters created for the film such as Miss Coddle (Keala Settle) and Adam James as Glinda’s father.
