Wicked Star Cynthia Erivo Rages Over Fan-Edited Wicked Poster
It’s not just Marvel and Star Wars fans who get insulted by Hollywood figures for caring about the things they’re expected to spend money supporting. Wicked, the movie adaptation of the hit Broadway play – which is an adaptation of a book called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire – will arrive in theaters next month. (Actually, Wicked is going to be two movies, with the first releasing next month and the second a year later.) Wicked is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz that follows Galinda, who eventually becomes Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, and Elphaba, who will become the Wicked Witch of the West, while they’re in college (seriously?) and presents Elphaba in a sympathetic light, essentially blaming everyone else for her becoming the Wicked Witch of the West because this is the only thing anyone knows how to do with villains anymore. The movie poster, which you can see below, features Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Galinda:
That poster is an homage to the famous poster from the Broadway show, which featured the witches in the same pose, albeit with Elphaba’s head turned down, her face kept obscured by the Wicked Witch’s infamous black hat:
After the movie’s poster was released, a fan redesigned it so that it looked more like the poster from the play, with the hat turned down and Elphaba’s eyes hidden:
If you think that’s a harmless tribute to a beloved play made by a loyal fan, you clearly need Hollywood to strap you into a chair and give you the full Clockwork Orange treatment because you’re clearly a bigot… or normal; one or the other. Elphaba actress Cynthia Erivo saw the fan-made poster, and she let loose on Instagram with a self-righteous tirade that stopped just short of accusing Wicked fans of racism, which I suppose shows unusual restraint for a Hollywood person (via The Today Show):
How do these people even get up in the morning? If something like this offends you, it must be impossible to get through the day. Nobody was trying to insult Cynthia Erivo or her super-serious acting in that poster. They were just remembering the poster for the play – which, by the way, is better because it makes the Wicked Witch of the West look more sinister, setting up her turn to evil. The movie poster doesn’t say that; it’s just one woman whispering to a second woman, who stares ahead blankly. Much like Cynthia Erivo herself, the movie poster is no fun, while the poster from the Broadway show is playful. Some fan tried to have fun with the movie based on the play they love, and Erivo made it clear that is not acceptable, and everyone has to be as miserable as she is. I’m not going to pretend there was a chance in hell I was going to watch Wicked, but do you think anyone who was considering it is more inclined to see it now? Rationally, this has nothing to do with the movie itself, but it puts a bad taste in people’s mouths, and it makes the movie sound like a chore rather than a fun experience for musical fans, which is what it should be. Moreover, I’m sure a lot of people saw the fan-edited poster and enjoyed it, and Cynthia Erivo just insulted them all. I wouldn’t blame them for returning the favor and skipping the movie. Are these people ever going to learn that it’s a mistake to antagonize the audience? Or are they going to keep asking each other to hold whatever it is they drink instead of beer and launch a new volley of hate against the people whose business they need? These entitled, sanctimonious divas are turning the audience against them before anyone even knows their names.
Let us know what you think of Cynthia Erivo’s distaste for fan-edited posters in the comments!
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Comments (6)
This can definitely be a big hit. You’re correct, women love Wicked. I don’t know what the tracking is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very good.
If you watch South Park, there’s probably gonna be a lot of guts in the audience, too, not so much for the movie but for the after party.
You can usually find a lot of bootleg recordings of the show on YouTube. My favorite, that’s my go-to version, was closing night in Chicago. Mind you, you can’t beat the original cast of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, but the recordings are so bad.
The story is generally good. Act II, to me, is a bit dull. The music is catchy though.
The fans were trying to show love and contribute something and she slammed them.
Imagine the cries of racism when fans decide to Cosplay as the green witch character. Oh, the culture vultures! Time to cry.
Stephen Schwartz made a lot of chances to the story from the source novel because he felt it wasn’t great. I’ve heard from others that have read it that felt the same way.
This movie is going back to the source to expand in to two movies out of greed.
They also hired Ariana Grande to play Galinda who WANTED to play Elphaba most of her life and was prepared for it. She said this on ‘A Very Wicked Halloween – Celebrating 15 Years on Broadway’ in 2018 just before singing ‘The Wizard and I’.
This movie was ALWAYS going to be a failure before they woke it up. Maybe they did that so they could accuse audiences of racism when it crashes.
Wow, I didn’t know any of that. I’m not familiar with much of the history; I only heard of Wicked when it came to Broadway because the advertising was everywhere. I wonder if there’s a reason they cast Ariana Grande as Galinda instead.
It’s possible they’re doing it on purpose. Blaming the audience seems to be the entertainment industry’s go-to move, which is insane. It’s funny, I recently read some old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby era Fantastic Four comics, and in his intro to one of the collections, Lee talked about fans writing to tell them that Sue Storm felt extraneous to the team, so they took that as a sign that they had to have her do more and emphasize her skills and what she brought to the Four. They actually used fan feedback to make the books better instead of just calling everybody a racist or something.
Used to see that book cover a lot and that poster. For years. I almost was inclined to watch it, even with the changes they made to make it more of a racial thing than an outcast thing, but the reactions I saw were from the “modern audience.” Would say this could make money cuz it seems like the Barbie crowd and that’s what I think the fans did in this case, was try to be stylish with the poster. As talented as that Cynthia is, she’s a headcase. You see this a lot with privileged types these days is they get into that role of Literally Shaking oppressed victim like a shivering dog out of a hurricane. I never liked those Oh, The Humanity types. Taking on burdens that are not there and talking about being unburdened by what has been.
I consider a lot of the fans, from what I saw of the reactors, to be just as nutty as Erivo is and, believe it or not, there’s probably more risk in seeing this than there was with JOKER. Audience full of types brone to outbursts of emotion and unstable.