We've known for a while that Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are starring in Jon M. Chu's ambitious (and two-part) adaptation of stage musical Wicked. A big new piece of the puzzle has been found, as Bridgerton's Jonathan Bailey will play Fiyero.
Wicked, in case you weren't already aware, was originally drawn from Gregory Maguire's novel, which tells the untold story of Galinda and Elphaba, the witches from The Wizard Of Oz. The movie comes via the stage production’s book writer Winnie Holzman and Academy Award winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz.
Erivo's Elphaba is the young witch who will go on to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, but who is seriously misunderstood. Grande, meanwhile, plays the ambitious, popular Glinda (changing her name slightly).
Fiyero is the Big Man on Campus, a party animal who prefers having a good time to thinking and gets engaged to Galinda. But his true feelings for Elphaba surface and he helps her to escape, ending up captured by the Wizard's guards, and tortured. A spell Elphaba casts to try to save him instead — spoiler alert! — transforms him into the scarecrow. Chu took to twitter to confirm Bailey's casting...
The two parts of Wicked are currently scheduled to land in cinemas for Christmas 2024 and a year later in 2025.