The new trailer for Wicked, based on the enormously successful Broadway musical contains epic vistas of the land of Oz. It’s got fantasy creatures, magical shoes, and impressive CGI. All that stuff looks good. But there’s one thing you won’t find in it: A single shot of someone singing on camera.
The Wicked film is a musical — and it does contain music, as the whole trailer is scored to the show’s most famous song, “Defying Gravity.” But it’s all left in background in the trailer, while the characters — including Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s Glinda — interact and talk and show off their magical abilities.
You can watch the trailer below.
READ MORE: Why Are Trailers For Musicals Pretending They’re Not?
In a way, it’s almost impressive; it seems like it would be really hard to make a trailer for a faithful Wicked movie without showing someone (anyone!) singing. But they pulled it off.
To be clear, Wicked is not the first recent movie to fudge its musical nature in its marketing. Last fall, I wrote a whole piece about this odd phenomenon, citing similar trailers for movies like Wonka, The Color Purple, and Mean Girls. This is just what the Hollywood studios do now: If they’re trying to sell a musical, they do whatever they can to convince people it is not a musical.
I presume they do this because because their market research tells them that moviegoers will not pay to see something if they think it contains singing. Why studios keep making so many musicals when they seem to believe audiences are turned off by singing is a question I am still struggling to answer almost a year later.
Here is the Wicked film’s official synopsis:
Wicked, the untold story of the witches of Oz, stars Emmy, Grammy and Tony winning powerhouse Cynthia Erivo (Harriet, Broadway’s The Color Purple) as Elphaba, a young woman, misunderstood because of her unusual green skin, who has yet to discover her true power, and Grammy-winning, multi-platinum recording artist and global superstar Ariana Grande as Glinda, a popular young woman, gilded by privilege and ambition, who has yet to discover her true heart. The two meet as students at Shiz University in the fantastical Land of Oz and forge an unlikely but profound friendship. Following an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads and their lives take very different paths.
Wicked is scheduled to open in theaters on November 22. It is the first of two planned films adapted from the Broadway show; Wicked: Part Two is scheduled for release on November 26, 2025. (The trailer does not make mention of this fact either.)
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