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The upbeat, colorful marketing for the sure-fire holiday hit Wicked has tiptoed around a very important fact. It’s that when Wicked hits theaters on November 22, it’s only half the story. This is merely “Part One,” though it’s not being called that, with “Part Two” coming a year later. Knowing that, one would probably expect the film version to be a more manageable length, especially since it’s based on a long-running, super-popular Broadway musical that itself runs under three hours. But, apparently, that’s not the case.
Tickets for Wicked are not yet on sale but the film has found its way onto the ticketing site, Fandango, which lists its run time as two hours and 40 minutes. The AMC Theaters page says the same—though, of note, Moviefone says two hours and 22 minutes. io9 has reached out to Universal to see what the correct runtime is and we will update this post if/when we hear back.
Assuming it’s two hours and 40 minutes though, that’s almost the exact same length as the entirety of the Broadway show. The show, give or take, runs two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission. So somehow this movie version—even if it’s two hours and 22 minutes— has basically doubled the length of the story.
Now, you fully expect it to be at least a little longer. Movie adaptations of musicals can dive deeper into the characters and the world, almost always have an extra song or two, etc. So sure, you get that each movie isn’t going to be a 1:1 split in half. It was never going to be 90 minutes. But to be almost double that is wild.
There’s also the little matter that most people consider the first half of Wicked to be significantly better than the second, mainly because it has the more upbeat, exciting, and popular songs. Will Wicked part one be amazing and then everyone waits a year for an inferior but still very long finale? It’s certainly a possibility.
Whatever the case though, there are sure to be people who assume, at a length almost equal to the show, Wicked is the full story. Those people may not to be happy when the credits roll in November unless, of course, the movie is that good. And frankly, that’s what we’re hoping for.
Directed by Jon M. Chu, based on the musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman (who wrote the script), Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James, Keala Settle, and Peter Dinklage. It opens November 22.
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