What Named Critics Said About Wicked: The Reception Record, Explained

Wicked, director Jon M. Chu's screen adaptation of the stage musical, opened in U.S. theaters on November 22, 2024, via Universal Pictures, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda. It became one of the year's highest-grossing films, took ten Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and drew broadly positive notices from named critics — with real disagreements preserved below. This is an assembly of the attributed record, not a review.

What is Wicked, and who made it?

The film adapts the Stephen Schwartz–Winnie Holzman stage musical, itself drawn from Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, telling the prequel story of the two witches of Oz before Dorothy arrives. This first part covers the musical's first act; a second film, Wicked: For Good, was scheduled for theatrical release in November 2025. The running time is 160 minutes. After its theatrical run, the film moved to digital rental and then to Peacock's subscription tiers in the U.S. beginning in 2025; as of March 2026, availability is subject to change — check current platform listings.

What did critics say about the performances?

The most consistently praised element across the reception record was the central pairing. Critics at Variety and The Guardian centered Cynthia Erivo's vocal performance of Defying Gravity in their notices, and reviewers at The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly highlighted Ariana Grande's comic timing as Glinda. The two leads' interplay — the friendship arc that carries the film — was treated by nearly every major outlet as the reason the adaptation works. Supporting notices went to Jeff Goldblum's Wizard and Jonathan Bailey's Fiyero, with Bailey's dance number drawing repeated mention. On the acting question, the sampled critics did not meaningfully split.

How did critics describe the production?

Reviewers at The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline described large-scale practical sets — Chu built a real Shiz University campus at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden rather than relying on digital backdrops — and that choice was widely credited in reviews for the film's tactile texture. The production design, by Nathan Crowley, and costume design, by Paul Tazewell, later won the Oscars in those categories at the March 2025 ceremony. Some critics, including writers at The Washington Post, noted the film's desaturated, autumnal color grade as a point of discussion, and home-video releases subsequently offered adjusted color presentation — a detail coverage at the time documented closely. Direction was praised as confident by most sampled outlets, with the pacing criticisms noted below as the counterweight.

Where did critics disagree?

Two lines of criticism recur. First, length and splitting: several reviewers, including critics at Vulture and New York, questioned the decision to adapt the musical's first act into 160 minutes, calling the midsection slow for a story audiences know ends at Defying Gravity. Second, spectacle versus intimacy: a minority of notices argued the scale sometimes swamps the two-hander intimacy that made the stage production work. The defenders' position, as expressed in reviews at The Atlantic and the BBC's culture desk, was that the expanded runtime earns its emotional payoff in the final sequence. The record shows a split on pacing, not on craft or performances.

What did the aggregators record?

Named to their aggregators: Rotten Tomatoes logged an approval rating around the high-80s percent mark for Wicked's opening run, and Metacritic assigned a weighted score of 73 out of 100, its band for generally favorable reviews. Audience measures ran higher — Cinemascore reported an A grade on its opening-weekend polling, per standard trade coverage. Aggregates drift as reviews accumulate; these figures are as recorded in the 2024 release window.

How did it perform commercially and at the awards?

Wicked opened to roughly 112 million dollars domestically over its November 22–24, 2024 weekend and went on to gross more than 700 million dollars worldwide, making it one of 2024's biggest films — figures per Universal's reported box-office tallies. At the 97th Academy Awards in March 2025 it received ten nominations, including Best Picture and acting nominations for both Erivo and Grande, winning two: costume design and production design, as The Associated Press reported from the ceremony. Its sequel, Wicked: For Good, follows in November 2025; this piece covers only the first film's reception record.

Anything to weigh before watching?

Spoilers below this line.

The film ends with the staging of Defying Gravity and Elphaba's split from Glinda and the Wizard — the musical's act-one curtain. If you want the film's final image intact, stop reading reviews of the final sequence; nothing above this line spoils it. Viewers sensitive to flashing imagery should also note that some sequences use strobe-like lighting effects, a detail widely flagged in accessibility write-ups of the release.