‘Wicked: Part Two’ Moves Up Thanksgiving 2025 Release Date
Universal Pictures has tinkered with the Thanksgiving 2025 release date for Wicked: Part Two.
The second of the Wicked movies, based on the wildly popular Broadway musical, will move from Nov. 26, 2025 to Nov. 21, 2025, a Friday. That gives more time for word of mouth for the film to build and also distances the Universal tentpole from Disney’s Zootopia 2 as it’s set to hit theaters on Nov. 26, 2025.
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Moving the sequel up by five days also follows Universal shifting the release date for Wicked Part Two from Dec. 25, 2025 to Nov. 26, 2025, a Wednesday. Universal and the filmmakers had also moved up Wicked: Part One from Dec. 25, 2024 to Nov. 27, 2024 in a bid for the film franchise to become a Thanksgiving tradition for cinema-goers.
The Wicked movies, based on the best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire, are adapted for the screen by the stage production’s book writer Winnie Holzman and by Academy Award winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. The Broadway stage musical is produced by Universal Stage Productions.
Directed by Jon M. Chu, Wicked, the untold story of the witches of Oz, stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, a defiant social outcast who has yet to discover her true power, and Ariana Grande as Glinda, a popular young woman, gilded by privilege and ambition, who has yet to discover her true heart.
As the two women forge an unlikely sisterhood, they will empower each other in ways that neither foresees. But as dark forces of prejudice and oppression loom on the horizon, the choices they make will separate them, and will set them on different destinies that will change them, and Oz, for good.
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