Ariana Grande | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

There are many things to admire about the two Wicked movies, the final one, “Wicked: For Good,” released on 11/21/2025. This movie has been in the planning stages for many years, and both films were shot together, starting in December 2022. The entire production was put on hold in July 2023, and then resumed and finally wrapped in late January 2024. The production costs for the two films was a huge $455.8 million and after receiving a tax reimbursement from the U.K. resulted in a net cost of $370.7 million.

What I admire the most is the large amount of man-hours that went into creating the elaborate sets, musical arrangements, costumes, screenwriting, and acting for two movies based on the long-running Broadway play. The brilliant move that the producers of Wicked pulled off was releasing Wicked in two films over a period of a year. The reasons were that the movie would be too long, and as we find out in the latest release, there are too many slow and boring parts in the second movie that would have ruined the high ratings and box office if these scenes were included in the first movie. Brilliantly, the first movie, which received a very high 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, set the stage to maximize the profits the second movie will make, as the anticipation for the second movie a year later increased the odds of much higher box office, despite the much lower 70% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

The problem with this second film is that much of the story is too slow and erratic, with not enough interaction between the two main stars Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo). The ending does have a very well-done and highly emotional reunion between these two characters, with an emotional song at a level of quality more frequent in the first movie. The story about how Elphaba becomes a wicked witch, because of her quest to help animals who are not being treated well by the Wizard of Oz, is somewhat convoluted within both films.

Unfortunately, the low Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 71% are correct this time, mainly because of the high quality of the first movie and the drop-off in the second movie. The rabid fans of Wicked will mostly be disappointed at the pacing and quality of this last movie. The most obvious solution would first be to have more scenes with Glinda and Elphaba with them acting and singing together. To be true to the Broadway play, there were just too many slow-moving and unnecessary parts in this second story.

For any true fan of “Wicked” it would be impossible not to see this second movie, which does have enough good parts to recommend.

While watching the new movie “Wicked”, which has been adapted from the long-running Broadway musical I realized that given the years of hard work, the sets, the costumes, the music, and the enormous amount of money spent on 2 Wicked movies (Wicked 2 will be released in November 2025), is that out of respect for this much effort, no critic could ever give a bad review to a movie like this one. I have no doubt that Wicked will be one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture this year, making it one of the few musicals ever nominated for Best Picture in Oscar history.

The story of Wicked is about the good witch Galinda played by Ariana Grande and the wicked witch of the West Elphaba played by Cynthia Erivo and how they met and became friends at a college called Shiz University. There are frequent musical numbers in this film, and the singing of all the cast members, especially Erivo and Grande is always outstanding. The overall story is slow at times and one flaw I thought was the transition from the friendship of Elphaba and Galinda into an ending when Elphaba and Galinda meet the Wizard, played by Jeff Goldblum, that seemed contrived and too out of nowhere. The ending, in my opinion, broke up the flow of the story too abruptly and seemed designed to create a dramatic ending out of nowhere.

At the end of the movie, there was a “To be Continued” message for the next film, Wicked 2, which will be released in late November 2025 and show Elphaba’s transition into an evil witch.

The real strengths of this film are more the musical numbers, amazing sets, and costumes, and less the overall story, which I thought was sometimes weak with an overly complex and contrived ending.

I mostly agree with the high 90% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and I recommend this movie.