Fans who are counting down the days until they can watch Wicked at home don’t have much longer to wait.
Wicked: Part One, starring Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, hit theaters on Nov. 22 — and Universal Pictures just announced that it will be available to buy or rent starting on Dec. 31.
Directed by Jon M. Chu, Wicked has been a labor of love for the cast and crew. The movie is an adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway musical of the same name, which was originally based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire.
“Everyone who’s involved is a theater nerd,” Jonathan Bailey, who plays Fiyero, told PEOPLE in December 2023. “It’s going to blow people’s minds. So get ready.”
Here’s everything to know about when and how you can watch Wicked at home.
When did Wicked premiere in theaters?
Wicked: Part One premiered in theaters on Nov. 22 — and viewers got their money’s worth with a run time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. Rated PG by the Motion Picture Association, the movie is considered fun (and appropriate) for the whole family.
Early on, Chu made the decision to split the film into two parts. Wicked: Part Two is slated to release on Nov. 21, 2025.
“It became increasingly clear that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing some real damage to it,” he wrote in a note to fans posted on X (formerly Twitter) in 2022.
Chu continued, “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.”
When will Wicked be available to stream?
Wicked fans got a delayed holiday gift on Dec. 26. The movie’s stars, including Grande and Erivo, joined together to create a video on Instagram to announce that Wicked would be available to rent or buy via video-on-demand (VOD) platforms (including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, YouTube and Fandango at Home) on Dec. 31.
It’s still unknown when Wicked: Part One will hit a streaming platform, but fans can expect to see it as an option sometime in 2025. As a Universal Pictures release, the movie will likely land on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock.
Historically, Universal films have gone from the big screen to the streaming platform in a timeframe of 45 to 120 days. In 2024, Twisters landed on Peacock four months after it premiered in theaters while Fall Guy and Kung Fu Panda 4 were available to stream after about three months.
What is Wicked: Part One about?
Part 1 of Wicked introduces audiences to Glinda (Grande) and Elphaba (Erivo), who meet as students at Shiz University in the Land of Oz. Elphaba is misunderstood due to her green skin, while Glinda is popular amongst her peers.
They’re paired up as roommates and forge an unlikely friendship, but after an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), Glinda and Elphaba go down two starkly different paths.
“Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfill their destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West,” per the film’s official synopsis.
While speaking to PEOPLE in July 2024, Chu said the film is a much deeper interpretation of the Broadway musical.
“Because of the camera, because it’s not a stage show, we get to go closer,” he said. “We get to be more intimate. We get the camera two inches from their face and that brings a lot of power to the show that you can’t have on a stage.”
What has the cast of Wicked said about the film?
Ahead of the movie’s release, Grande told PEOPLE that being a part of Wicked has “forever changed” her.
She joked that the experience was both emotional and a tad painful — due to Glinda’s many hair flips. “I was, I still am, stiff,” Grande quipped.
During an interview with The New York Times, Erivo said it was “really hard” to let her character go after filming wrapped.
“I still fiercely love her. … Characters like this don’t come along very often, they just don’t,” she explained. “The lore of Oz was very closed to girls who looked like me, and now I’m the Wicked Witch of the West. I think the doors are very open now, which is wonderful.”
As for Marissa Bode, she made history as the first wheelchair user to portray Elphaba’s sister Nessarose. Bode, who has been in a wheelchair since she was 11, told Today that she used her role to advocate for her community.
“How I feel as a disabled person in a world that is not necessarily built for me, in a world where people just don’t understand or aren’t always fully educated on disability as a whole — I definitely took those with me and leaned that into my character,” she said.
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