G.O.A.T. Peter Dinklage to play g-o-a-t in the Wicked movies
Dinklage's casting, as talking goat Dr. Dillamond, was announced at Wicked's presentation at CinemaCon today
Aux News Wicked
Jon M. Chu’s two-part Wicked film adaptation wasn’t exactly lacking for star power in the first place, what with Cynthia Erivo and Ariane Grande in its biggest roles, and back-up coming from the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey, and Jeff Goldblum. (The latter as the not-as-wonderful-as-advertised Wizard Of Oz.) Still, the film’s producers at Universal clearly felt that the musical adaptation—the first part of which arrives in theaters this November—could use just a pinch more of that big celebrity magic, revealing at CinemaCon today that Peter Dinklage has also joined the movie’s cast.
Specifically, Dinklage has been announced as the performer for Dr. Dillamond, the sympathetic talking goat who serves as a mentor to Erivo’s Elphaba, and who gets some of the most horrific treatment dealt out to anybody in both Greg Maguire’s original novel, and the massively successful musical built from it. Suffice it to say, then, that Dinklage is in for some fairly harrowing voice work in the part. The Game Of Thrones star comes to the project after a fairly busy 2023, with his most recent appearance being a co-starring role in Hunger Games prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes.
Wicked was the centerpiece of Universal’s presentation at CinemaCon, with Grande and Erivo taking the stage together to hold hands and show off footage from Chu’s film. The director himself was also in attendance (along with Goldblum, Bailey, and Yeoh), telling the audience that, “We dreamed very, very, very big for Wicked. We wanted to honor the source material. But we also wanted to create a new world of its own — a magical land full of sights and sounds that will astonish.”
The first part of Wicked is scheduled for a November 27, 2024 release date; it’s follow-up will arrive on Christmas Day in 2025.
15 Comments
It’s been a minute since I’ve seen the stage show, but as I recall Dr. Dillamond is barely in it. Like a bit in the first act at most. Perhaps this means they’ll be expanding his role in the films (still won’t believe it’s two films until it actually happens), or maybe Dinklage wanted a nice paycheck for a quick easy bit of work. Either way the fact that this movie doesn’t come out until late November and they’re already starting some major press feels just a tad exhausting.
It’s still a very disturbing and cool segment that would benefit from a great actor.
Dinklage is a great live action actor but his voice acting work hasn’t been great
In the olden days this announcement would’ve been accompanied by a video of Peter Dinklage hula-hooping.
Ariana GRANDE… “biggest roles,” …”“We dreamed very, very, very big for Wicked”😂
Every time I hear about the Wicked movie being made in 2024 I think of the Simpsons episode where Krusty retires where the reporter asks him “Why now, why not 20 years ago”, because I can’t believe they waited this long to make this movie. That would be like making a CSI movie today.
With the weird exception of Mama Mia, these musical adaptations seem to take awhile. How long did Cats take? Or Les Miserables?
I think Cats probably took much longer because of the story (as much as there is one) being so bare bones that it probably took a while to figure out how the hell to make it into a movie.And oh boy did they… (I’m still mad that I missed out on the Cats-mocking craze of 2019)
Seeing Cats in theaters in December 2019 right after Christmas in NYC with an audience full of drunk and stoned people was the best movie going experience of my entire life. It was pure chaos and it was fantastic.
38 years for Cats and 29 years for Les Mis. But by the time they came out they weren’t on Broadway anymore (Les Mis is still playing in the West End as of today). Wicked is of course still on Broadway and still a major hit: it grossed $2.4 million last week, just behind The Lion King.
10-12 years before adapting a popular musical as to not impact the Broadway/touring box offices seems to be the norm. Throw in development problems and COVID delays, and you’ve got why this one has taken longer. COVID messed up what could have been (and still might be) with Hamilton and Come from Away (And to an extent Waitress, even though that was a film in the first place). And Mean Girls is an outlier for multiple reasons.Rent’s movie came out 9 years after the musical opened, but closed three years after the film debuted. Wicked, however, is still going strong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m not sure there’s a hit show that aged as poorly as Rent. Not so much the AIDS angle, as the realization that half the cast members are living on the edge of freezing starvation out of choice yet can’t help but whine about it.
I can see how they wouldn’t want to hurt show sales, but is there anyone who wants to see Wicked live how hasn’t. The Canadian touring version has come through my city at least once (was supposed to come through again a few years ago but got cancelled by the pandemic).But it just seems like the kind of thing where you would want to push through a movie at the height of its popularity, which seems like it probably would have been around 2010? Making a Wicked movie now is like if they had waited and made the Angry Birds movie now.
Sure, but human nature is what human nature is. My favorite show of all time has a tour stop 30 minutes away from me this week. And I don’t plan to go because I can watch a better version on Apple TV tonight instead. That’s what they’re managing against.
Hollywood’s always been kind of hesitant about musicals in general, due to the fact that a large part of audiences hear “musical” and go “eh, not for me” and don’t buy tickets. You can see that with recent movies like Wonka or the Mean Girls remake/musical where the trailers pretty much show that they’re musicals but go out of the way to avoid making it blatant (I mean people were somehow surprised by the Mean Girls one despite the fact that it had a musical note in the logo). So in a way, I get why it’s taken this long. But also yeah, I do also question why it took this long instead of striking when the iron was hot and there was arguably more to be made.