The first teaser gave us a peek at some yellow bricks, a towering emerald green city, a truly magical gondola and, of course, a very green anti-heroine.
As the trailer begins, we hear Erivo singing the iconic opening lines of Defying Gravity. Then, a voiceover from Jeff Goldblum, who plays the Wizard: “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.” We then see flashes of Elphaba and Glinda meeting at university and forming an unlikely friendship. We also get our first glimpses of Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero. The trailer ends with Erivo delivering a guttural rendition of the famous riff from the end of the song. Absolute chills!
The second, full-length trailer featured a whole lot more detail.
What is the Wicked poster controversy?
As the release of the film draws closer, tensions seem to be mounting. The official poster for the film adaptation of Wicked was released in early October, and let’s just say it was met with mixed reactions. While many fans poured on praise for the poster, which shows Cynthia Erivo looking straight into the camera with Ariana Grande whispering in her ear, other people were quick to draw comparisons to the original for the 2003 musical.
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The main differences are that in the original, the character of Elphaba has a wicked (pun intended) smirk on her face and her eyes are obscured by her hat. It’s also noticeable that in the original, she is wearing striking red lipstick, whereas in the new poster her lips are green.
Fans were quick to edit the poster featuring Erivo and Grande and make new versions which are more like the original. But in a series of Instagram stories, Erivo slammed the fan-made versions as the “wildest, most offensive thing I have seen.”
“Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me,” she said. “And that is just deeply hurtful.” Erivo also called out other memes about the upcoming film, calling them “degrading.” “None of this is funny. None of this is cute,” she wrote.
While the poster has divided opinion, the excitement around the release of the film is still going strong.