Michelle Yeoh joins ‘Wicked’ as Madame Morrible

• Yeoh will play Madame Morrible, one of the story’s main antagonists.
• She joins Tony-nominated actor and Ethan Slater as Boq.
• The casting announcement comes just one day.

Michelle Yeoh is a master of multiverse hopping, and we’re confident she’ll steal the show in her next project, as the Everything Everywhere All at Once actress has been cast in Universal’s big-screen adaptation of Wicked.

According to Variety, Yeoh will play Madame Morrible, one of the story’s main antagonists and the character who demonizes the misunderstood Elphaba, dubbing her the Wicked Witch of the West.

Her path crosses Elphaba’s in Crage Hall at Shiz University, where she serves as headmistress, and she quickly falls for the young witch with great power.

Yeoh’s casting announcement comes just one day after we learned that Tony-nominated actor and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical star Ethan Slater would be joining the production as Boq.

Ariana Grande will play Glinda, Cynthia Erivo will play Elphaba, and Jonathan Bailey will play Fiyero, as previously announced. It was reported that Jeff Goldblum was in talks to play the Wizard, which we’re rooting for, but that has yet to be confirmed.

Wicked, which premiered on Broadway in 2003, was written by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman and is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

The story is a prequel to the classic tale of The Wizard of Oz, and it details the events preceding Dorothy’s arrival in the magical land and her journey to the Emerald City, specifically how the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch came to be.

The musical was a huge success, allowing Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth’s careers to continue to defy gravity. It would absolutely destroy at that year’s Tony Awards, where it was nominated for ten awards and won two.

Jon M. Chu is directing the film, which will be his second musical feature after this year’s In the Heights.

It will also be a reunion for the director and Yeoh, who worked together on Crazy Rich Asians in 2018. Yeoh was recently cast in the upcoming Transformers: Rise of the Beasts film, and he will next be seen in The Witcher: Blood Origin.

Wicked fans can expect the first instalment of the two-parter to hit theatres around Christmas 2024, with the finale following in 2025.

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