Last week, Warner Bros.’s Wicked did what immoderate movie adapting a well-known Broadway play would bash and uploaded a caller poster highlighting its main stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. The poster, which saw Grande’s Glinda whispering successful the receptor of Erivo’s Elphaba, present sees itself astatine the epicenter of online play betwixt fans that got truthful retired of manus that Erivo had to aerial them retired connected her authoritative societal media account.
The caller representation of Grande and Erivo pays homage to the archetypal play’s iconic illustration. Even if you person ne'er seen Wicked on stage, chances are you’ve seen this poster retired successful the chaotic due to the fact that it was virtually inescapable successful the aboriginal aughts. However, a notable alteration successful Warner Bros. Discovery’s different one-to-one recreation of the archetypal play’s poster is that Erivo’s look isn’t obscured by the shadiness of her pointy witch hat. While this infinitesimal item wouldn’t stone the satellite of immoderate mean idiosyncratic looking astatine the 2 posters, the net went beauteous chaotic with this discrepancy. What followed was a tirade of instrumentality edits claiming to person “fixed” Warner Bros.’s poster with the archetypal volition of making Erivo’s Elphaba arsenic devilishly witchy arsenic the Broadway poster’s iteration of the character.
Have you heard? #WickedMovie tickets connected merchantability now! 💚🩷 https://t.co/ZusjT6MqoA pic.twitter.com/8CQgqGgL8n
— Wicked Movie (@wickedmovie) October 9, 2024
Key among these instrumentality edit changes were casting a shadiness crossed Erivo’s eyes and editing her lips to person a akin reddish lipstick arsenic the Broadway poster. Somewhere down the line, fans got adjacent weirder with their armchair graphics plan sensibilities and “created” AI videos of the Wicked poster referencing an in-fandom meme wherever Glinda asks Elphaba astir her backstage parts being green, excessively (I don’t spell here; I conscionable constitute the news). This each prompted Erivo to dependable disconnected connected her authoritative Instagram communicative and telephone retired each the weirdo behaviour from Wicked fans.
“This is the wildest, astir violative happening I person seen, adjacent to that atrocious AI of america fighting, adjacent to radical posting the question ‘is your ***** green.’ None of this is funny. None of this is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us,” Erivo wrote.
She continued: “The archetypal poster is an illustration. I americium a existent beingness quality being, who chose to look close down the tube of the camera to you, the viewer…because, without words we pass with our eyes. Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my look and fell my eyes is to erase me. And that is conscionable profoundly hurtful.”
Erivo followed up her Instagram communicative by resharing the archetypal Wicked movie poster of her and Grande with the caption, “Let maine enactment this close here, to punctual you and cleanse your palette.”
Cynthia Erivo reacts to edits of the ‘Wicked’ poster and the viral AI warring animation:
“Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my look and fell my eyes is to erase me. And that is conscionable profoundly hurtful.” pic.twitter.com/R7jGz0Nxnx
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 16, 2024
Now that each that play has been explained and nipped successful the bud, hopefully fans tin much positively absorption their unbridled excitement for the prequel Wizard of Oz musical. Wicked is really portion 1 of a movie duology, with its 2nd fractional scheduled to merchandise successful November 2025. While the magnitude of the movie was successful contention astatine first, the authoritative AMC Theaters page, Fandango, and Moviefone each corroborate that Wicked has a two-hour and 40-minute runtime. For those keeping score, that’s as agelong arsenic the Broadway play with an intermission. Hopefully, the movie volition warrant doubling the magnitude of its root worldly crossed 2 films.
Wicked releases successful theaters November 22.
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