Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Wicked' - 'You’re not being told the whole story!'

The big screen adaptation of the beloved Broadway show is here...

And it only casts half a spell. Glicked never really materialised, did it? At least it didn’t in Europe, where both and came out a week apart. The bid to create a cultural event around the simultaneous (-ish) release of Ridley Scott’s sequel and Jon M.

Chu’s prequel, in hopes of rekindling the excitement that greeted last year’s , has fallen flat. That said, the US release of both films – in time for Thanksgiving weekend – may yield box office returns. But Glicked doesn't feel like anything compared to the zeitgeist-capturing 2023 cinematic event that was Barbenheimer.

While global box office numbers have yet to speak, it’s still plain to see that this year’s buzzy new movie face-off hasn't generated the same level of excitement, fan art . Despite what feels like months of press tours, the best could do to grab headlines was that . Both 2024 films may do well once the global stats come in, but the / releases are proof that desperately wanting to seize the public imagination by doing the same thing a second time around isn’t as foolproof as it may seem.

More than that, Glicked’s spiritus mundi failure may, in hindsight, boil down to the fact that neither nor are anywhere as good as and . Scott’s sequel was an entertaining enough romp but served very little purpose and . As for Chu’s first chapter of a planned two-parter, it is perfectly watchable but ultimately a bloated reminder that Hol.