Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero but we now know this adaptation could have been entirely different.
Grande and Erivo have been making history with a nearly perfect Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 99% and an amazing Certified Fresh 91% from the critics.
Lady Gaga almost chose a different musical and Shawn Mendes was ready for his big picture debut
one of 2024’s biggest disappointments. But she almost chose a different musical.
Per Shawn Mendes. Jon M. Chu was not attached to the project, instead The Crown executive producer Stephen Daldry was supposed to helm the adaptation. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, he has won three Tony Awards for his Broadway work and an Olivier for his work in the West End. However, the Wicked cast was wickedly well chosen, as per people’s early reviews.
Lady Gaga is a fantastic singer and decent actor, but even she couldn’t save Joker from drowning. “They had meetings, the two of them, about the character and who she would be. [Gaga] was essentially cast in his version, and then it fell through,” a source said about Gaga and Daldry, who wanted her to play Elphaba. At the same time, he considered Mendes as Fiyero for the movie, a role that eventually went to Jonathan Bailey.
Given Wicked‘s worldwide popularity, the project has been in talks for a long time. Daldry was announced as director in 2016 and tried to make it work but departed the project in 2020 due to scheduling conflicts. Gaga went on to star in Joker 2, and Jon M. Chu cast the magical Cynthia Erivo for the role, with Grande as Glinda, and Jurassic World‘s Bailey.
All’s well that ends well because, as charming as Mendes is, and despite Lady Gaga’s chameleonic skills, the magic Jon M. Chu put on the big screen with the current cast proves everything happened for a reason and Erivo and Bailey were born for this.
Published: Nov 20, 2024 08:44 am