The Journal. - Why Hollywood Is Betting Big on ‘Wicked’

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

The movie musical “Wicked” collected a blockbuster $114 million in its opening weekend. Over the past year, Universal and its parent company Comcast have launched an all-out marketing blitz to blanket the world in “Wicked.” WSJ’s Erich Schwartzel reports on how it is the new Hollywood playbook. Further Listening:- The Curtain Closes on Phantom of the Opera  - The Rise of the Minions  - Why 'Yellowstone' Is One of TV's Most Expensive Shows  Further Reading: - Inside Hollywood’s Big ‘Wicked’ Gamble  - ‘Wicked’ Flies High on Big Screen, With $114 Million Opening Weekend  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This year, it's been almost impossible to go anywhere without seeing some kind of promotion for the movie Wicked. I mean, you really could spend like every hour of the day consuming some kind of wicked promotion. It really is turning what is by definition a movie into some kind of lifestyle statement. That's our colleague Eric Schwartzle, who covers Hollywood. He says the marketing push is one of the biggest Hollywood has ever seen. It started officially with the movie's stars appearing at the Super Bowl, which was now nine months ago.

Arianna, we love you! And there's just been this steady drumbeat of Wicked promotion since then. There was a ton of references to it at the Summer Olympics. Celebrate their story. Tonight at the Olympic Games. The Today Show had Wicked interviews. We are ready to defy gravity here in Paris as we welcome two stars of the highly anticipated movie musical Wicked.

And they have a line of clothes at Target. There's no place like Target to shop everything Wicked. I mean, they're selling drinks at Starbucks, they're selling nail polish, they're selling drinks at Starbucks. They're selling nail polish. They're selling dolls. They have Santa at Bloomingdale's wearing a green suit rather than a red one. Just Santa's in on it too? I know. I was shocked. Everything that you can imagine that could be Wiccified is being Wiccified.

It feels almost like they're trying to manufacture virality. Yeah. I just have this image of like this ruthless corporate machine, like grinding into gear, like here comes wicked, which is such a funny thing to think about. And it is the kind of flood the zone campaign that really is kind of willed into being by Hollywood today. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Monday, November 25th. Coming up on the show, how Wicked advertised its way to the top of the box office. This episode is brought to you by TELUS Business.

This Black Friday, TELUS Business is helping small businesses get more done and save. Get the latest technology for your business at exclusive Black Friday prices. Shop these limited time offers today at TELUS.com slash business Black Friday. Conditions apply. TELUS, proud supporter of Canadian business. of Canadian business. [♪ music playing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing, wind blowing I went to this summer camp and there was a kid there who told me about this new Broadway show that he was obsessed with Wicked so when I went home, I Had recently gotten my driver's license and I drove my Hyundai Elantra to the Best Buy nice to buy the cast recording I remember listening to it in my car

Non-stop. How many times do you think I've listened to the soundtrack? Well, see, this is so, I'm gonna assume zero, because one thing that I have found reporting this story is that for as many of us like me who know so much about this show and have seen it multiple times, there's this whole other part of the globe that has just like totally sat this one out. That is me. I am the part of the globe

that I knew that it existed. And that is, that's about it. Which is a funny thing to imagine for someone like me, who is almost like, feels like I'm seeing something I know so well. Do you have a favorite song? Oh, it's probably Dancing Through Life, which is this big, like, six and a half minute song

about putting your cares aside and dancing through life, which is this big, like, six and a half minute song about putting your cares aside and dancing through life, right? You're going to have to sing dancing through life, because I don't know what it sounds like. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I wasn't born yesterday, never in a million years. No, I know how these work. Wicked was first a novel that came out in 1995, and it takes the classic tale we all know,

The Wizard of Oz, and casts it in a different light. The author, Gregory Maguire, had this idea of retelling The Wizard of Oz, but in a way that takes place largely before the film and the book, but also recasts characters that we know well. So in this retelling, the Wicked Witch is not a villain. And it tells the story of the Wicked Witch as a young woman at school,

where she meets Glinda the Good Witch. And it's about their friendship. Just to point out how wild this is, the new movie Wicked is based on a musical, which is based on a book, which is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, which itself was a movie based on a musical, which is based on a book, which is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, which itself was a movie based on a musical and a book that first came out in 1900.

It's a story that people clearly seem to be drawn to. -♪ BELL CHIMES, FADES OUT. -♪ Wicked the musical opened on Broadway in 2003. And was it a hit from the start? No, it wasn't. It was it a hit from the start? No, it wasn't. It was actually a very dicey proposition because it had a budget of $14 million, which in Hollywood is a quaint indie, but on Broadway is a massive investment.

And then there were some critics who thought that it relied too heavily on the stagecraft. Like there's a lot of special effects. I mean, Act One ends with Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, like several feet above the stage because she's flying, she's defying gravity, so to speak. Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity She sings the song and at a climactic moment she ends like high above the stage. And when I went to see Wicked in Wicked if I would have thought this show is going to be a blockbuster.

Because it doesn't seem on the surface like it should work as well as it does. And my friend said, well, you might have just because the songs are so good. The songs are, in his view, the songs are significantly better than your average Broadway show. They stick with you, they kind of have a way of, like a good pop song, kind of becoming this recurring refrain in your life. And you sort of want to be like, I'm dancing through life. Like, how does that one go again?

I'm not doing it, Brian. Soon enough, the show was a big Broadway hit. Brian, I... Come on. I... I... I... I... I... Soon enough, the show is a big Broadway hit, with Idina Menzel cast as the witch Elphaba, and Kristin Chenoweth as Glenda. The musical's been on for 21 years, making Wicked one of Broadway's longest running shows. It's been seen by more than 65 million people and it's raked in

more than five billion dollars in ticket sales. And it's also developed in an enormous army of people like yourself who are massive Wicked fans. Tell me more about this fan base and how many are there of you? How many are? We're everywhere. We're like, and we find each other. You know, it's interesting when I was working on this story, I found that the fans of Wicked really behave in a way that I think we've always associated with fans of like superhero comics. And as the show has developed a kind of lore of its own, fans have followed that lore.

So there are, you know, dozens of women who have played these two lead roles who fans will compare performances of and see what they're doing differently and how they're interpreting it differently. It's really become kind of a living document. -♪ If Wicked had such a loyal fan base

and the Broadway show was such a huge success, why did they wait so long to make a movie? Well, on one hand, making a movie feels like an obvious choice, because if it's a huge hit on Broadway, and even if just a fraction of the people who see it on Broadway go to see it in theaters, you might have a hit. But there are a couple considerations they had to keep in mind. One is cannibalizing the show and worrying about rushing out a movie too quickly, whenever you're still making so much money on ticket sales for the live show. And then the other is that they knew that doing it with the wrong cast or doing it in a ham-handed way

could just hurt the property overall. Studio executives at Universal, which invested in the Broadway show and owned the rights to the movie, also worried about upsetting the musical's loyal fans. When you have this core group of really passionate fans, you need to make sure that they're kept happy because if they sour on the film,

it can kind of contaminate the whole pool of opinion. So Universal took its time. It looked at different versions of scripts, fielded pitches from actresses who wanted to play the roles, and worked on getting the Broadway team to help with the movie. I talked to the chief content officer at NBC Universal, and she said to me, you know, she's been at the studio for more than 20 years, and that entire time,

she has thought about when is the right time to make a wicked movie. Finally, studio executives felt like they'd cracked the code. But they didn't just want to make the movie. They also wanted to turn it into a massive cultural phenomenon. That's next. This episode is brought to you by TELUS Business. This Black Friday, TELUS Business is helping small businesses get more done and saved. Get the latest technology for your business at exclusive Black Friday prices. Shop these limited-time offers today at TELUS.com slash Business Black Friday.

Conditions apply. TELUS, proud supporter of Canadian business. [♪ MUSIC PLAYING FADES OUT, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES OUT, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES OUT, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES finally landed on pop star Ariana Grande as Glenda and the Broadway phenom Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. Fans talked about the casting choices all over social media. Breaking news, they just announced that Ariana Grande is gonna play Glenda and Cynthia Erivo is gonna play Elphaba in the new Wicked movie. Let's talk about it. Ariana posted her reaction and goes, thank goodness. Her co-star Cynthia, who's playing Elphaba, sent her flowers and goes, pink goes good with green.

Honestly, not that surprised about Elphaba because first of all, her vocals. And then the production started and the production sounds like it was just this like absolute gargantuan undertaking. At one point they planted nine million tulips in a field. Nine million tulips? I know, it's not even like mentioned in the show,

but I guess they wanted it to look as, as fulsome as possible. Universal went big on the film's production. And when they got ready to market it, they decided to go just as big. How much money are they spending on marketing this? Yeah, I don't have a number, but like, I can definitely say like like it's not news that a big budget movie is going to have a massive marketing campaign Because these studios need to try and make a return on their investment But even by those standards the wicked campaign is giant

What's the logic behind such a massive marketing campaign? We're in a moment right now where massive marketing campaign. We're in a moment right now where the movie goer who might have seen four or five films a year before COVID is now more likely to see two or three. There is just a finite amount of time that we give to certain pieces of pop culture. And the movies have taken a significant hit on that front, been replaced by whether it's Netflix or TikTok or what have you. And so movies, which I mean, for much of the 20th century enjoyed an easy cultural dominance,

now have to really fight for that dominance. And when you have a movie with a budget like Wicked and investment like Wicked, you need a lot of people to decide, I'm gonna get up off the couch, I'm going to hire a babysitter, I'm going to drive to the theater, and I'm going to go see this movie.

And the movies compete with so much else out there for our pop culture time. An all-out campaign, or some would say assault, is what you need to do to really capture the zeitgeist today. Some of the strategy mirrors last year's Barbie rollout, which relied on huge marketing to become a $1.4 billion hit. And just as Barbie star Margot Robbie wore shades of pink across her promotional tour, Erivo and Grande have taken on the red carpet strategy

of dressing in green and pink from the Wicked wardrobe. To broaden out this flood-the-zone approach, Universal executives went to their bosses at parent company Comcast and pitched Wicked as a company-wide priority. That's why across the Comcast empire, and this really, I think, speaks to the reach of the modern entertainment conglomerate.

That's why you can see some kind of wicked presence everywhere from the Today Show to SNL, obviously both NBC shows, but also see it at the Thanksgiving Day Parade at the end of this month. You can also see it in the ads. Like anything that Comcast touches is basically thinking, what can we do to help push Wicked? The list of marketing partners feels like it's never ending. There are partnerships with Lexus, Build-A-Bear, Stanley, Aldo, Fossil, Forever 21, Crocs, Legos.

The movie also partnered with Ulta for Wicked Makeup. I could go on and on and on and on for the rest of this podcast, but I won't. If Wicked has such a loyal fan base, though, why go so big on marketing? Because aren't its millions of fans likely to go see the movie anyway? It's a great question. I mean, I think you want to make sure that you try to make the tent as big as possible. And I think that's one challenge that this movie has is that there are people

I'm told who will just not ever see a musical There are just like giant chunks of the of the movie going population that they're going to have trouble getting so they need to they need to make the tent as big as possible. getting, so they need to make the tent as big as possible. I also think it's about just sort of whipping those fans into a frenzy. And I think the wicked fandom that has been sort of serviced now over the past year by this massive campaign is just helping to amplify all of that excitement and energy. And then I think it also, like to your question about the bottom line, it also helps make sure that maybe they organize a big outing with 10 friends to go see it on opening night. Maybe they take it to that next level where they're buying more tickets.

They're seeing it two or three or four times. Are there any risks with this flooding the zone strategy? Oh yeah, I mean, I think it, I mean, the biggest risk is just like everyone's saying enough already. And the head of marketing at Universal gave this presentation that I was at where he said, we're going to be just short of obnoxious. Uh-huh. That's a, that's even like a tricky line.

That's a, that's a That's even like a tricky line. It's a very subjective line. Yeah. It really is a fine art. I think the oversaturation risks alienating people, but I also think you run the risk of over-hyping and then they're causing a backlash, right? It's this really kind of like emotional exchange between the marketing department and the public. After a big opening weekend,

it's clear that the strategy worked. The film grossed $163 million globally, making it the highest grossing opening weekend for a film based on a Broadway musical. And that's just for Wicked Part One. Eric says he'll be keeping an eye on whether Universal Strategy carries through to next November when Wicked Part Two comes out. I mean, what does all this say about about Hollywood in 2024?

I think what it says about Hollywood is whenever you see Wicked on the subway or you see Wicked at an NFL game or you see Wicked on the shelves at Target, like part of it looks really impressive, right? Like, this is really a sign of what a company can do whenever it sort of focuses its energy. And I don't think it's actually, it's not lost on me that we're talking about a movie that is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, which more than maybe any movie ever embodies the Hollywood Golden Age of Hollywood having this kind of cultural dominance, this saturation, this kind of global appeal. And I think in the context of Hollywood,

there's another angle where it looks like a last grasp. And it looks like it is exhausting itself to try and have a monopoly on our attention. have a monopoly on our attention. And what will it mean if it fails and it doesn't actually translate into the kind of box office numbers that they're hoping for? I think if it fails, it is not good news for those of us who want to go see musicals.

I think. You know, maybe if you sing, you know, maybe more people will go see the film. Remember that line about just short of obnoxious? Uh-huh. I think that's the line. Is podcast guests singing the wicked cast recording. But just short of obnoxious, so then we'll be good.

Just short. Yeah. Yeah. That's all for today. Monday, November 25th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.