Wicked Heading to NBC for 15th Anniversary Concert with Original Stars — and Ariana Grande!
Fans of the hit musical Wicked hoping to see it onscreen one day can shout “thank goodness!”
NBC announced on Wednesday that they will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Stephen Schwartz-penned Broadway show this October with a special concert taped at New York’s Marquis Theater led by original stars Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.
The two actresses will host and perform in the show, dubbed A Very Wicked Halloween: Celebrating 15 Years on Broadway. Chenoweth, 50, and Menzel, 47, were last back together in 2016 — when they performed a duet from the show for the first time since they hung up their broom and wand after the 2004 Tony Awards.
They’ll be joined in the NBC special by a cavalcade of special guests to help celebrate the music and the magic of the show, including Ariana Grande, Pentatonix, and the current Broadway company of Wicked.
Grande is an alum of both Broadway and NBC televised live musicals, having starred in Jason Robert Brown’s 13 on stage back in 2008 and Hairspray Live! in 2016. Pentatonix also has ties to the peacock network. The a cappella group won the third season of NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2011.
Wicked opened on Broadway on Oct. 30, 2003, and has gone on to become a cultural phenomenon — winning over 100 international awards (including three Tonys) and earning over $4.6 billion in global sales, with performances in over 100 cities across 14 countries around the world. Over 55 million people have seen the show worldwide.
Based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, the musical tells the story of the witches popularized in The Wizard of Oz, but from their perspective. Book writer Winnie Holzman adapted the tale, while Schwartz penned its Grammy-winning score. Songs like “Defying Gravity,” “Popular” and “For Good” have gone on to be come mainstays in the musical theatre lexicon.
Many of those tunes have been performed by Grande in the past, too. Videos have surfaced of her singing “For Good,” “The Wizard and I,” and “I’m Not that Girl” on YouTube. She dueted with Mika in 2013 on his “Popular Song,” which sampled Wicked‘s “Popular”
And then there was Carpool Karaoke: The Series, on which Grande sang “What Is This Feeling” with Seth McFarlane. “One of my dream roles is to play Elphaba,” she said in the episode. “I would do it tomorrow. I’d cancel my whole s—. That’s my dream.”
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Grande might have the chance to do just that on the big screen one day.
A film adaptation of the musical has long been in development at Universal, with Variety reporting in August that the movie currently has a Christmastime release planned for Dec. 20, 2019. No casting has been announced yet.
A Very Wicked Halloween: Celebrating 15 Years on Broadway airs Monday, Oct. 29 (10 p.m. ET) on NBC.
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