In the age of social media, successful marketing now needs to create a cultural moment. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie defined summer 2023, and everything became Brat in summer 2024. It was inevitable that Jon M. Chu’s highly anticipated film adaptation of Wicked would dominate conversations. With a marketing budget of $350 million, Wicked’s promotion has felt neverending; for some, the cultural saturation of Wicked has made it off-putting. On TikTok, even fans of the musical have been “given the ick” at Wicked’s inescapable promo. In the early 2010s, moviegoers were already concerned about the problem of oversaturation when it came to film marketing, with trailers often giving away too much of the film and leaving nothing to be excited about. Since Barbie, there seems to have been a shift and the issue audiences now have is that they feel sick of films before they’ve even hit the cinemas, due to their countless brand collaborations and press junkets.
But can too much press be a bad thing? Putting aside the obvious commerciality that some may feel destroys the heart and soul of a film and thinking practically, this kind of incessant marketing is unfortunately just what the market demands nowadays. When Saleha Malik, co-founder of marketing agency S-Squared, was interviewed by Huffington Post, she explained that while this approach may annoy certain audiences, it will consistently and effectively drive ticket sales. Studios aren’t concerned by consumer fatigue because as of right now, it hasn’t had any negative financial effects. While it might irritate certain audiences, the film industry is first and foremost a business, and this is currently the best way to promote and compete with other films.
Thinking in this pragmatic, business-minded way can feel disheartening for some film fans, and, in this instance, for fans of the Wicked musical. With all this focus on promotion and economics, can any of the magic of live theatre and Stephen Schwartz’s original story even be transferred to the screen? Did we even need a film adaptation of Wicked? I would say yes. Although movie musicals are different from live theatre, they absolutely can capture the heart and soul of what makes musicals so magical.
Admittedly, I am biased here, as I grew up obsessed with watching movie musicals. One year for Christmas I was gifted the DVD of Mamma Mia and I remember making my family watch it over and over for the next week. My prized possession was a box set containing the DVDs for Calamity Jane, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Meet Me in St Louis, and High Society. I even named my goldfish Fred and Ginger. Wicked is probably my favourite musical, and I have been lucky enough to see it live in the West End, so when I first heard a film was in the works, I was delighted. For many people, the cost of tickets to see a show in the West End or Broadway is just unrealistic. Kristen Chenoweth, the original Broadway Glinda, said herself, “as a kid growing up in Oklahoma, I couldn’t get to Broadway. We couldn’t afford that. So I relied on television and books, and occasionally a tour that might come through Tulsa.” Jon M. Chu has taken a musical with so many existing fans and opened it up to new audiences who otherwise may never have seen it.
Wicked’s commerciality has also been an enormous success for increasing cinema-going. In recent years, film discourse has often revolved around fears that cinema is dying. For Forbes, Scott Phillips pointed out that every film released in May 2024 (The Fall Guy, Furiosa, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, among others) “combined to make less money than Avengers: Endgame (2019) made in its first eight days of release.” Avengers: Endgame was released in a pre-pandemic world, and the pandemic absolutely impacted people’s habits when it came to cinema-going. We are also living in a cost of living crisis, and people are less inclined to spend money as freely when it comes to watching films. So, studios have had to up the ante with their marketing and take note from recent box office hits like Barbie. With Wicked and Gladiator II releasing on the same weekend, they made a combined $270m in worldwide ticket sales, and people treated going to see Wicked on the big screen as an event.
So while Wicked’s extreme levels of marketing may have felt too much for some, Wicked has absolutely been a successful moment for film this year, and this is without even going into what an incredible, joyful, and earnest adaptation it is. Live theatre isn’t the same as cinema, but the magic of Wicked has still been captured on film, and captivated many viewers who may have never held space for ‘Defying Gravity’ otherwise.