Wicked: For Good has been shut out of the 2026 Oscars.
The NBCUniversal film, a continuation of Jon M. Chu’s 2024 Wicked and based on the 2003 stage musical, failed to score Oscar nominations on Wednesday morning, despite 10 nominations for the first film at the 2025 ceremony.
Perhaps the most shocking snub of the bunch being the exclusion from the best original song category. The stage musical’s original composer Stephen Schwartz crafted two new songs — “The Girl in the Bubble,” performed by Ariana Grande; and “No Place Like Home,” performed by Cynthia Erivo — for the sequel film. Wicked was not eligible for the best original song category for the 2025 Oscars as the first film featured only music from the stage musical.
Wicked: For Good’s leading ladies, Erivo and Grande, both scored a nomination at the 2026 Golden Globes earlier this year. Both of Schwartz’s original songs also scored nominations at the January award show.
Led by Erivo as Elphaba, a.k.a the Wicked Witch of the West, and Grande as Galinda/Glinda, a.k.a. the Good Witch, Wicked: For Good continues the complicated backstory of the witches of Oz that started in the 2024 film Wicked. Chu and the team shot both movies together “over 160 days and got stopped 10 days before finishing [because of the strike] our ‘Defying Gravity’ and flying days,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. The team finished up the 10 days of production at the beginning of 2024.
The films are based on the 2003 musical of the same name, which was originally based on the best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire’ Winnie Holzman, the stage production’s book writer, wrote the screenplay for Chu’s movies with Dana Fox. Schwartz adapted the musical for the screen. Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth originated the roles of Elphaba and Glinda on Broadway (and they appeared in surprise cameos during the “One Short Day” sequence in the first film).
