'Wicked Part Two' Moves Up A Week

The second part of Jon M Chu's musical melodrama will again position itself as the season's youth-skewing YA fantasy tentpole alongside Disney's Thanksgiving toon.

Despite all marketing evidence to the contrary, the upcoming Wicked is still “Part One of Two.” Wicked Part One reacted to the $155 million opening weekend of Inside Out 2 by moving back a few days to avoid a Thanksgiving showdown with Moana 2. And now Universal is doing likewise with Wicked Part Two, shifting from November 26, 2025, to November 21, 2025. This will avoid a direct showdown with Zootopia 2. As noted and advised before the initial date change, this will allow Universal to position the Cynthia Erivo/Arianna Grande duo more clearly as the (slightly) older-skewing YA fantasy flicks that tend to open on the weekend before Thanksgiving week. Simplistically speaking, Wicked 1 and Wicked 2 are to The Twilight Saga: New Moon and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire as Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 are to Tangled and Frozen.

There’s no word on Disney moving Pixar’s Elio out of the way of DreamWorks’ live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake, with both slated for June 13, 2025. If I were the Mouse House, I’d want to avoid such mutually assured destruction unless Bob Iger and friends want to A) hurt DreamWorks’ attempt to do their “live-action remake of a popular toon” schtick and B) allow Elio to underperform to give cover for tripling down on remakes, sequels and revamps. Or, maybe Donna Langley and friends would also prefer to kneecap Disney’s ability to justify original toons, but I digress. I sincerely hope that's just me being a cynical bastard. Disney surely knows that its staff would much prefer to work on Elio *and* Frozen III, with the boffo box office for the latter somewhat subsidizing rolling the dice on the former.

Maybe give Fantastic Four breathing room by moving it to November (because surely Blade will make its date, right?) and open Elio in late July? This isn’t the year-end Christmas/New Year’s season — with two weeks of weekdays that play like weekends due to kids being out of school and many adults getting time off work — where Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King can both potentially thrive concurrently. You can #Barbenheimer all you want, but Barbie and Oppenheimer were polar opposites in terms of genre, tone and (stereotypically speaking) demographic interest. Opening How to Train Your Dragon and Elio on the same day is closer to the once-promised showdown between Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman. For now, Wicked Part One and Wicked Part Two are positioning themselves as Harry Potter to Disney’s Tangled. #PeaceInOurTime and all.