Inside the Great and Powerful Merch and Marketing Blitz of ‘Wicked’

“Wicked” is everywhere.

In the lead-up to the film’s release this weekend, Universal struck brand partnerships with dozens of companies. Starbucks is selling “Wicked”-themed specialty drinks at nearly $6 each and gift cards. Kahlua and Absolut Vodka created “cocktails straight from Oz” for $159.99. Clothing brands like Forever 21, Gap and Stanley are in the mix — Stanley has a giant tumbler in either pink or green for $55 — along with OPI, which is offering several new shades of nail polish with names like “Ozitively Elphaba” for $11.99 each.

This is just the beginning. No matter what consumers want or what price they’re willing to pay, there is something “Wicked”-related on offer. From consumer products to toys to lifestyle brands, jewelry, wellness and cosmetics, the great and powerful Oz touches all.

It’s unavoidable. It’s inescapable. And it is unlike anything Hollywood has mounted before. It makes the product blitz of Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Barbie” seem positively restrained by comparison.

One top marketing exec estimated NBCUniversal has 400 merchandising and promotional partners for “Wicked.” Universal declined to specify how much the studio spent promoting the film. But another top marketing executive estimated the studio spent more than $150 million worldwide on the marketing campaign, thanks largely to Universal’s cross-business-unit Symphony program that uses every arm of the company to promote a title. That same executive estimated that “Wicked” received about $100 million in free marketing from Symphony, including $75 million worth of TV and streaming ads during the Paris Olympics.

Vince Klaseus, president of Universal Products & Experiences, told TheWrap that “Wicked” is one of the biggest marketing blitzes ever. “When you’re in this space for a long time, these gems come along every so often,” he said. “It was one of those properties that, from the beginning, we knew was going to be something special. If anyone’s not seeing it, I think they’re living under a rock.”

Entire aisles at Target are devoted to the movie. At Universal Studios Hollywood, a whole restaurant (Hollywood & Dine) and two stores (UNIVRS and the Feature Presentation) have been completely outfitted for “Wicked.” And movie promotions are dominating ad breaks on “Saturday Night Live,” which airs on NBC, a Universal-owned network.

In the original “Wizard of Oz,” the yellow brick road was lined with munchkins and oddball characters. This time around, if you take the same path you’ll find a “Wicked”-themed Samsung Music Frame (comes with a special bezel and “Wicked” photo cards) for a cool $450 or a Cambridge Satchels Mini Sophie bag in three new colors for an eye-watering $685.

And the list goes on.

Popular

It’s not a huge surprise that Universal Products & Experiences would go so big. The group at Universal is responsible for consumer products, brand partnerships and theme park integrations that are defining the “Wicked” merch assault. And the property is practically a legacy title for Universal.

According to early estimates, “Wicked” is expected to bring in more than $100 million at the domestic box office this weekend, against a reported $145 – $160 million budget. For Universal, this is a relief. After “The Fall Guy,” meant to be the start of a series of films, failed to connect with audiences earlier this year, “Wicked” could represent a lucrative new franchise for Universal.

“Hopefully you see and feel that it’s a really unified approach and message,” Klaseus explained of the approach to getting “Wicked” everywhere in the months ahead of its release, which required coordination between the products and theatrical marketing teams. “The marketing of this, with the activations, with the experiences, they all are feeling like they’re coming from the same place and they’re all really tightly woven.”

Universal bought the rights to the novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” shortly after its publication in 1995. In 2003, Universal adapted it into the stage musical “Wicked,” and the Tony-winning show is still on Broadway. In fact, the stage show is the second most successful Broadway show of all time after Disney’s “The Lion King,” netting a combined $1.25 billion. That’s more than Broadway stalwarts “The Phantom of the Opera” ($1.18 billion) and “Chicago” ($637 million).

There have been several attempts to adapt the musical, either as a television event or a feature film, with filmmakers cycling on and off without much success. Eventually the project landed with director Jon M. Chu, who was coming off the success of “In the Heights,” another modern musical favorite that he seamlessly transitioned to the big screen. “We waited for a very, very long time for it to come to this point,” said Klaseus.

Chu made the decision to split the show into two movies (the second part opens on Nov. 21, 2025 — more on that in a minute) and cast Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, and Ariana Grande as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. They have been supportive and cheery on their seemingly never-ending press tour/awards campaign.

And people are ready.

“It feels like a massive cultural event,” a top marketing exec told TheWrap. “I don’t think it’s overkill. I appreciate it’s at the edge. I have been seeing everything, watching every interview, listening to podcasts — all of it. And I find it really engaging. And they’ve made it more than the Broadway show to the casual fan.”

Defying gravity

One of the ways that the “Wicked” campaign is breaking new ground is by placing the movie inside the Universal theme parks and shopping, dining and retail corridor CityWalk, a decision that was made well before the film hit theaters — a change of course for Universal. Klaseus said the team was “pretty confident” about the property early on and decided to “lean in from the beginning and invest in this.”

“It is a little unprecedented in terms of how we’re rolling this out, but it has been absolutely phenomenal,” he said. “We usually give it a little time and wait and see how this performs, then we come on at a certain point and develop.”

According to Klaseus, the “more extensive experience” is happening at Universal Orlando Resort with props and scene recreations.

During a recent episode of “SNL,” nearly every commercial break featured something “Wicked” – from an ad for a behind-the-scenes primetime special to a preview of the movie itself to tie-ins like the one for Xfinity broadband mobile services (Xfinity, like Universal and NBC, is owned by cable giant Comcast). Oz, we assume, gets great Wifi. That same week, NBC’s late night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers featured Grande and Erivo, respectively, and even Fallon’s monologue had “Wicked”-themed jokes.

“I don’t think there was a fear of over-saturation, at least from a product standpoint, because we were so careful in how we laid out Phase One,” Klaseus said. The intention, he said, was “continuing to build and broaden in Phase Two and Phase Three.”

That’s right – there’s even more coming soon.

For good

Klaseus and his team have to do this all again in less than a year. The marketing team held back on certain categories to save them for promotion of “Wicked: Part Two.”

“We did a very strategic rollout plan,” he said. “Then we started thinking about the types of partners we wanted to bring on board and really started to map that out. And it was hundreds of partners cross-category, from kids to adult.”

How do you create the same frenzy of excitement, with just as many partners, when everybody has already experienced the first “Wicked?”

Klaseus said that, in some cases, they were sold out of product before the film was even released. “With that kind of success, the exciting thing is, you have partners knocking on the door, saying, ‘Sign me up. I’m on board for the next round,’” he added.

Thankfully, both parts of “Wicked” were filmed at the same time. It isn’t the typical rollout where Klaseus and his team are waiting for the sequel to be produced before they can start the partnerships.

“Wicked: Part Two,” which starts after the big musical number “Defying Gravity,” presents an opportunity because it has been slightly freed up from its predecessor. The next film has new scenes and new character development. “It will give it a nice, fresh, different look and feel when you come into 2025 so you’ll experience the world and the characters in a whole different lens,” Klaseus said, teasing an expansion of the story with which fans are already familiar.

Klaseus and his team will be catering to new fans. “Coming out at the very beginning, we wanted to make sure we were focused on delivering for the core fans, but as more people watch this, that fandom is going to grow and expand, and so that obviously expands the opportunity for us, and that ripples across the world,” he said. “It’s just going to continue to roll.”

As for his favorite piece of “Wicked” merchandise, director Chu couldn’t even narrow it down.

“I have so many,” Chu told TheWrap. “The suitcases are amazing, they are beautiful in person. The LEGO sets I’ve been doing with my kids. Monopoly? Awesome.”

He would see, say, the Mattel dolls and would remember “making the choice about which hat to go with or choosing the mangrove roots for the broomstick,” Chu said. “And then those become the things that are on the Starbucks cup. That blows your mind.”

Additional reporting by Umberto Gonzalez and Jeremy Fuster.

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