‘Wicked’ Stars Ariana Grande & Cynthia Erivo Received Equal Pay, Universal Says
Universal made the unusual move of publicly addressing online speculation about pay disparity between its Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
Rumors percolated on a Reddit post that Grande was paid $15 million for her turn as Glinda, while Erivo collected only $1 million for her role as Elphaba in the big-screen take of the $5 billion-grossing Broadway musical about the Wizard of Oz witches. The two-part feature film production cost $320M before marketing spend.
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“Reports of pay disparity between Cynthia and Ariana are completely false and based on internet fodder. The women received equal pay for their work on Wicked,” a Universal Pictures spokesperson said in a statement to Deadline.
Deadline checked with another source connected to the film, and they verified the duo were paid the same.
Grande has long expressed her interest on social media to play Glinda, the “good” witch, in Wicked.
The duo told Deadline’s Dessi Gomez how they bonded during production. The pair first met at Erivo’s house for a five-hour chat before testing their vocals together singing at director Jon M. Chu’s home.
“Both of us made the decision and have had the discussion about really being good to each other, making space for each other, being honest with each other and choosing to build our friendship,” Erivo told Gomez.
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Wicked, after coming in under slightly from its $130M weekend domestic forecast with $112.5M, had a fantastic Monday making $15.8M, a record for the month of November. The pic’s three-day global gross of $162.5M and domestic weekend are the best ever for a movie based on a Broadway musical. Its current global tally sits around $180M.
Pulling in 70% women, Wicked will see competition at the box office starting tonight from Disney’s Moana 2, which has a running time of 100 minutes versus the Jon M. Chu-directed movie which weighs in at 2 hours and 40 minutes. Wicked is expected to generate a five-day total of around $90M over the Thanksgiving break. Moana 2 is expected to set a five-day Thanksgiving record with $125M-$135M, beating the Turkey holiday haul of Frozen 2 which did $125M in 2019.
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