Welcome to Statue Season! Each week leading up to the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, we’ll be checking in on the closest races, the winningest narratives, and the plain old movie magic that will decide who’s taking home the gold on March 15, 2026. This week, we’re weighing the pros and cons of Wicked: For Good’s Oscar campaign.
Wicked: For Good, the film adaptation of the stage musical’s second act, came out last weekend to middling reviews and box office gold—which is pretty emblematic of the entire Wicked experience. People have strong opinions about this thing; some are endlessly enchanted by Glinda and Elphaba, and some would rather see the Land of Oz burned to the ground. But where will the Academy stand? There’s plenty in the film’s favor heading into awards season: It’s a certified blockbuster with megastars echoing the days of old Hollywood musicals. But it’s also muddled by CGI and a narrative that was divisive even before it was brought to the screen. Let’s run through everything For Good and For Bad about Wicked: For Good’s Oscar campaign in an attempt to determine whether it can defy gravity over its competitors at the Academy Awards in March.
For Good: It’s, Well, Popular
No matter how you feel about Wicked, one thing’s for certain—it’s a box office smash. Sure, maybe it’s filling theaters with people who pull out their phones to take pictures of the screen, but those are still people who bought a ticket. And For Good is already outpacing its predecessor. The sequel grossed $150 million domestically in its opening weekend (compared to the first film’s $112.5 million debut), which is the second-highest first weekend domestic gross this year. (Alas, Glinda and Elphaba still have nothing on chicken jockey.)
Wicked: For Good will be one of the highest-grossing films of 2025 and there’s a good chance it could be the highest-grossing Best Picture nominee at the Oscars next year. (Though it will have to pass Sinners, and let’s not forget we still have an upcoming trip to Pandora planned for late December.) While the effect the box office has on a Best Picture campaign isn’t as clear-cut as it may seem, the Academy has historically given the prize to films that turned a healthy profit. Plus, after COVID-19 and the Hollywood strikes stalled movie theaters, being a bona fide blockbuster is a fantastic résumé booster come awards season.
For Bad: Critics Are Calling It … Not Great
Last year’s Wicked had its detractors, but a tornado of negative reviews hit Oz this time around. The New Yorker called it “very, very bad.” The Atlantic said it “collaps[es] under the lightest scrutiny.” Even our own Big Picture podcast said it was “no good.” This has led to For Good garnering much lower Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores than its predecessor.
We’ll get into the reasons for those criticisms, but if For Good still lands a plethora of Academy Award nominations despite all of the negativity, it certainly wouldn’t be the first Oscar player to overcome negative reviews. (Please don’t forget that the movie with the penis to vaginaaaa song was the most nominated film at last year’s Oscars.) But like Emilia Pérez before it, which won only two trophies out of 13 nominations, Wicked: For Good could still fall short during the actual ceremony due to its reception.
For Good: Ariana Grande’s Case For an Oscar
Remember the Cats movie? (OK, of course you’ve been thinking about Jennifer Hudson’s distressed CGI cat every day since.) But remember when Taylor Swift was asked about her involvement in it after the movie was widely panned and she said, “I had a really great time working on that weird-ass movie”? That’s kind of how I feel about Ariana Grande’s involvement in Wicked. Of course, neither Wicked film was mocked as harshly as Cats was (and they both fared much better financially) but amid all of the films’ grotesque CGI and perplexing plot points, Grande as Glinda maintains a bubbly (no pun intended) disposition that attracts the eye when things get dull.
Glinda is, unfortunately, victim to some of the self-seriousness that mars the second act of the musical. (A dreary ballad written for the film, “The Girl in the Bubble,” doesn’t help.) But when she does get in her linguification and hair flips (plus, a couple of bitch-slaps), they’re a breath of fresh air. And after Grande lost the Best Supporting Actress trophy last year (to Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldaña, no less) the Academy could see this as an opportunity to reward her for her performance over both films, rather than just the latter. It would be nice for her to be able to use her “Popular” performance for her Oscar clip, but Variety currently predicts that she will take home the statuette this year regardless.
For Bad: Do Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh Know What Movie They’re In?
Outside of Grande, the other For Good performers seem just as confused as I was when I found out—spoiler ahead—the Wicked Witch and the Scarecrow were banging when Dorothy’s house arrived in Oz. (Seriously—what??) Cynthia Erivo is tasked with moving along a lot of nonsensical plot, but her voice belts out enough big ballads for her to come away largely unscathed (and still in the running for Best Actress). The supporting performances don’t fare as well. Jeff Goldblum seems to have stumbled onto the set and the camera just happened to catch him doing the same schtick he’s been trotting out since the ’90s. (Though he claims that he was so moved by the films’ theme of animal rights that it inspired him to quit eating meat. Maybe he’s secretly a Wicked superfan Gelphie shipper and is just trying to compensate with some put-upon cluelessness?) Michelle Yeoh, on the other hand, clunkily delivers line after line in an attempt to make us make sense of the happenings in Oz, and her villainous turn from the end of the first movie continues to less-than-convincing results. Jonathan Bailey and Ethan Slater are sidelined for much of the second half of For Good, and their characters’ transformations are really just canvasses for the makeup department’s FYC campaign. Don’t expect to see the Wicked cast filling out the supporting categories.
For Good: It Could Be in For the Lord of the Rings Treatment
The Lord of the Rings film series won a handful of trophies for its first two installments, but its true coronation famously didn’t come until The Return of the King swept all 11 categories it was nominated for. I don’t think that was necessarily because everyone agreed that the third film was the best in the series—I’m personally partial to Fellowship—but the Academy likely viewed the conclusion as an opportunity to reward the series as a whole. Wicked could be headed down the same yellow brick road. The Academy may overlook the underwhelming reception of the second film to evaluate both parts as one massive cultural phenomenon worthy of Oscar recognition. (That is, if Wicked really has reached its conclusion—Variety reported Tuesday that more sequels are already being discussed at Universal.)
For Bad: The Plot Is Bananas
Anyone familiar with the Wicked stage musical knows that the second act’s plot is more inconsistent than the length of Dorothy’s pigtails. There are forced connections to The Wizard of Oz, bizarre flashbacks, and a severe case of prequelitis that builds to a series of reveals, each more baffling than the last. This has led to polarized opinions on Act II from even Wicked’s biggest fans. (Splitting the musical in two for the film adaptation was certainly a choice!) At best, For Good makes Dorothy’s original adventure through Oz, which is happening in the background of For Good, just not make any sense. (I’m sorry, when exactly did the Tin Man give a mildly fascistic speech to an angry mob during the events of The Wizard of Oz?) At worst, it desecrates one of the most iconic, singular works in Hollywood (and American!) history. The Academy might come away from the film too perplexed to hand it awards—or it could even be offended that the film dared to tinker with a classic.
For Good: Costumes, Sets, and Makeup, Oh My!
If your movie isn’t set in the contemporary real world, you’ve already got a leg up in many of the Oscars’ technical categories. The Academy seemingly believes that period or fantasy design is inherently more impressive than anything modern or realistic. That isn’t accurate—the fact that you saw so many robes and oversized sunglasses on Halloween this year is a sign of great contemporary costuming!—but that line of thinking led Wicked to wins for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design last year. I mean, the film does have a character in full body green makeup for the entirety of its run time. Plus, the crew designed some intricate costumes and lavish sets, even if the cinematography didn’t quite do them justice. Which leads me to …
For Bad: It Makes Oz Look Less Than Wonderful
If you’re going to draw upon a foundational work of American art that defined the visual language of color cinema, the last thing you want to do is desaturate your color palette. Unfortunately—like the adaptation of Act I, which sparked furious criticism about its aggressive backlighting—Wicked: For Good is a washed-out, CGI-riddled goop fest that doesn’t make good on all the beauty the Land of Oz has to offer. (In fairness to director Jon M. Chu, the quote going around Film Twitter that he “forgot” to do the color-grading is not true—though maybe it says more that people thought that it was?) And this time it throws in—again, spoiler—a scene with uncanny de-aging effects that were not only visually heinous, but completely unnecessary narratively. If anything, For Good will make you watch The Wizard of Oz in awe once again—this time, for the fact that an 86-year-old movie looks so much better than so many blockbusters today. (When it’s not artificially expanded to fit a 160,000-square-foot screen.)
While these criticisms made the rounds during the first Wicked, the film as a whole was still received pretty positively. Now that the sequel is coupled with much harsher reviews, the Academy could be reluctant to reward it in the technical categories, especially when it will likely be going up against VFX god James Cameron.
For Good: It’s an Old-School Movie Musical—This Time, With Original Songs
For some in the Academy, Wicked represents a bygone era of movie musicals that people consistently lined up for. Though we think of the current era as a musicals drought, the few of the big-budget variety that harkened back to MGM’s yesteryear that have made it to the screen in the past 10 years have often been rewarded with a Best Picture nomination—like La La Land, A Star Is Born, and West Side Story. The Academy is clearly a sucker for anything reminiscent of Hollywood’s heyday, and they might see Wicked: For Good as a descendant of the golden age of movie musicals.
This time around, Wicked has an additional category in its sights that it didn’t compete in last year: Best Original Song. Composer Stephen Schwartz penned two new songs for Act II’s film adaptation: “No Place Like Home,” sung by Elphaba, and “The Girl in the Bubble,” sung by Glinda. Due to Hollywood’s lack of musicals, the Best Original Song category is often pretty weak, with the four slots not reserved for Diane Warren usually up for grabs. This year, though, it will be hard for any tune to compete with KPop Demon Hunters’ “Golden,” one of the flat-out biggest songs of the year, but the sheer power of Wicked fever might be enough for it to put up a fight.
For Bad: The Songs Are Mediocre
Another reason Wicked’s second act is received less warmly than its first is that the musical numbers take a notable dip in quality. For Good is filled with treacly ballads indistinguishable from each other—there’s no jaunty number like “Popular” or sweeping “I Want” song like “The Wizard and I” this time around. The second film’s soundtrack isn’t completely devoid of bangers—Erivo absolutely rips through “No Good Deed”—but it all culminates in the saccharine “Defying Gravity” knockoff “For Good” that serves as an underwhelming finale. These songs probably won’t accompany quite as many TikToks as the Act I hits did.
For [Redacted]: You Will Be Seeing Nonstop Press For This Movie For the Foreseeable Future
If it feels like the Wicked cast has been on a nonstop press tour for an entire calendar year, it’s because they kind of have been. I’m talking junkets, late-night shows, gimmicky interviews (often including chicken), sexually suggestive embraces (with the literal Sexiest Man Alive!), and, of course, holding space. Grande and Erivo have been at the center of it all, with their apparently very close relationship capturing a nation—like when Erivo “fixed” Grande’s seemingly perfectly fine necklace last January and fans reacted extremely normally. Even when these two don’t do press (“in solidarity”) it’s somehow press. With awards season just getting started, we’ve still got several months of Cynthiana to go. Maybe nonstop press is what will strong-arm For Good into some trophies, but post-Oscars, don’t be surprised if some people are ready for a break from Wicked, well, for good.
Stock Watch
To paraphrase one of cinema’s great stockbrokers: Nobody knows if an Oscar stock is going to go up, down, sideways, or in circles. In this section, we’ll evaluate who’s on the up-and-up and whose momentum is sputtering out as the competition across categories heats up.
Stock up: Variety’s weekly updated Oscar predictions currently have Ethan Hawke taking home Best Actor for Blue Moon—might Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet splitting the vote open up the door for him? The Critics Choice Awards announced its shortlist in craft categories on Monday, with Sinners getting recognized in every category. Everyone on Film Twitter had something to say about Train Dreams this week, but maybe the fact that people are talking about a Netflix movie at all is enough for it to snag a Best Picture nomination?
Stock down: Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out installment, is once again only playing in select theaters before being unceremoniously (and bafflingly) dumped on Netflix despite the box office success of the first film. Zootopia 2 is tracking for a massive debut over Thanksgiving—and might deliver the first blow to KPop Demon Hunters’ Best Animated Feature campaign (and finally give parents a break from hearing “Golden” on repeat). The success of Wicked: For Good and Frankenstein (and their showy makeup transformations) has led Bugonia to lose steam in the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category. Sorry, Emma Stone—we appreciate you going bald anyway.
