Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Photo:
Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande helped show off the yellow brick road to kick off a new Wicked press tour.
At CinemaCon 2025 in Las Vegas on Wednesday, April 2, the two Oscar-nominated actresses appeared during Universal Pictures’ presentation of upcoming titles to tease Wicked: For Good, the next and final installment in director Jon M. Chu’s two-part screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical.
Erivo, 38, and Grande, 31, were joined by Chu and producer Marc Platt at the presentation, which ended with an epic early For Good teaser. The footage included glimpses of Dorothy from the back and side, as well as a look at the yellow brick road that leads to Emerald City. The scenes appear to be direct callbacks to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which starred Judy Garland as Dorothy.
The clip also showed Elphaba (Erivo) telling Glinda (Grande) she’s the “only friend I ever had,” before Elphaba responds, “And I’ve had so many friends.” A snippet of Elphaba’s “No Good Deed” was heard and Glinda sang her half for “For Good.” It ended with Elphaba flying with her monkeys, saying, “I’m off to see the wizard.”
Before introducing the clip, Erivo told the Las Vegas crowd she and Grande “can’t wait to get back on the road again,” joking that they already have their “tissues packed.” However, she did promise “less waterworks this time, but I am not sure we can live up to that.”
Grande said Glinda will have to look at her “reflection,” while Erivo said Elphaba will have to decide “how to use her powers for good.”
Onstage at the The Colosseum in Caesars Palace, Erivo and Grande wore outfits reminiscent of their Wicked characters, Elphaba the so-called Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch, respectively.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty
Again directed by Chu and adapted by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox from Stephen Schwartz and Holzman’s musical (itself based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked, inspired by L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels), Wicked: For Good will bring back stars Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Ethan Slater and Michelle Yeoh.
As the footage screened for the CinemaCon audience teased, the new movie promises an altogether darker chapter in the prequel to the events of 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale, who becomes enmeshed in the conflict between Elphaba, Glinda and Goldblum’s Wizard, appears on the story’s periphery as she did in Wicked: Part One, when she was glimpsed marching down the yellow brick road with the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion.
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Jon M. Chu, Marc E. Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty
Wicked: Part One was a box office smash upon its November 2024 release, becoming the highest-grossing musical film adaptation ever and the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2024. It earned 10 Oscar nominations including for Best Picture, winning for Paul Tazewell’s costume design and Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales’ production design.
“I think you can expect a little bit of spice in the second part because they’ve grown up a little bit,” Erivo told PEOPLE and Entertainment Weekly on the red carpet for the 2025 SAG Awards in February. The characters audiences got to know in Part One, she added, are “not in school anymore; they’ve stepped into their careers and stepped into their choices.”
“If Part 1 is about choices, Part 2 is about consequences,” Chu told EW in a November 2024 interview teasing the next installment. Characters, he teased, will be “asking, ‘Is this the right decision that you made?'”
Wicked: For Good is in theaters Nov. 21.
