The Wicked movie is keeping a big secret that you won’t like

The latest Wicked trailer confirms the movie is hiding a huge secret from its audience about how it will be shown in theaters.

Jon Chu’s re-telling of the iconic Broadway musical is hit to set theaters just in time for Thanksgiving 2024.

Wicked, starring Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, and Jonathan Bailey, is a prequel to the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz and tells the origin story of how Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the East came to be.

The musical itself is almost three hours long, so many fans thought the film adaptation would follow suit, However, the movie will be split into two separate parts despite it not being advertised as such.

Director Chu took to Twitter in April 2022 to announce Wicked Part One and Two were in the works writing, “As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. So we decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one WICKED movie, but TWO!!”

And a year later in December 2023,  Stephen Schwartz, the movie’s composer, sat down with Collider and doubled down on the crew’s decision to make two musicals.

“We ultimately decided to do two movies because we couldn’t get it all crammed into one movie without, we felt, really compromising the story,” he said. “We thought no one wanted to sit for four hours and see one movie so it got divided into two movies.”

However, despite all of the confirmation, none of the promotional materials for the new movie have come out and said the story it will be shown through two entries, leading many fans to believe this is being hidden on purpose.

Universal Pictures

“I am fascinated by the lack of ‘part one’ in any of the film’s promotional material,” one fan posted on X/Twitter, with another adding, “This is literally how I’m learning it’s gonna be two parts….”

And a third fan commented, “My theory is they’re still debating doing it. Cause this poster is very very ‘Act Two.'”

Despite this fact being hidden, some fans stand by the choice to make the movie a two parter as one explained, “My theory is that it won’t be Wicked Part One and Wicked Part Two. It’ll be like Wicked and Wicked: Rise of Elphaba or something like that.

“We ALL KNOW its gonna end at the intermission part – we all know it *has* to be two parts or that movie would he damned near 5hrs. LOL.”

Wicked: Part One will premiere on November 22, 2024, with Part Two coming a year later on November 26, 2025.

In the meantime, check out all the new movies out this month and keep up with our guide to the best movies of 2024 so far.