The Wicked poster design controversy is getting a bit ridiculous

Everyone has an opinion on movie poster designs these days, and some controversies linger like a spell cast over the internet. A week ago, we noted how fans were criticising new Wicked poster because it was a bit different from the poster for the West End musical (as if movies were ever supposed to be exact replicas of stage shows).

A movie is inevitably going to take a different approach to a story than a stage show, and the design was hardly one of the worst movie posters of 2024. But today's easy access to graphic design software such as Photoshop inevitably led some fans to attempt to 'fix' a design that didn't really need to be fixed. Actress Cynthia Erivo felt aggrieved by the amateur design efforts, and the debate is now spiraling out of proportion.

It's unusual for a studio, artist, and much less a major star, to respond when social media users roast a poster design (other than when 50 Cent slammed his own poster). But on this occasion, it's partly warranted.

Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, alongside Arianna Grande's Glinda, in the upcoming movie. I can understand why she might be aggrieved at people wiping her face from the poster design even if they did merely want to emulate Dewynters' original 2008 design for the stage show.

Several people, including even the image editing platform Picsart, posted edited versions of the movie poster. Most efforts attempted to make it look more like the original design by painting Cynthia's lips red, hiding her eyes under her hat, and moving Arianna's hand. It was a now-deleted version by the X user @midosommar that caught the attention of Cynthia herself, and she didn't hold back in blasting the editing.

"This is the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen equal to that awful AI," Erivo wrote on an Instagram Story in response to one such edit. "None of this is funny, none of this is cute. It degrades me. It degrades us," she added.

She went on to explain why the poster design was composed the way it was: "The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer, because without words, we communicate with our eyes." "Our poster is an homage, not an imitation," she added. "To edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me, and that is just deeply hurtful."

A lot of fans seem to agree. An X user wrote: "All of you supposed 'wicked fans' should be ashamed of yourselves. I don’t care how much you love the original poster. For a show that's all about prejudice and the color of a young woman’s skin the racism couldn’t be any clearer. You do not deserve this film."

"Cynthia Erivo is an artist and her feelings are valid. She does not appreciate fans defacing her character. She has every right to feel the way she does," another person wrote.

Others felt that Cynthia had overreacted. "Girl, they was not erasing you… people just wanted the new poster to match the same energy as the Original Wicked poster," one person wrote.

The person behind the offending edit has apologised and deleted their post. “My initial intent with the poster was not malicious in any way – it was an edit I made in 10 mins to pay homage to the original poster and had no intention of it blowing up like it did. I deleted the original post out of respect for Cynthia,” they said. However, there's no stopping the juggernaut, and other people continue to post their own edits of the poster design.

The whole controversy may have been blow out of proportion (and this isn't even the first time a poster for 2024's Wicked has caused controversy: there was that ham dress teaser poster back in February). But Cynthia has a point. This original poster was for a stage show, and it was designed to work no matter who was playing the lead roles. A major movie is a very different beast.

The actors are a bigger part of the draw, and actors often have contractual agreements stipulating that their name and face must be on the poster design. As Cynthia says, the intention was to reference the stage show poster, not copy it. If you want to see the stage show... well, just go to see the stage show. That said, fan edits to movie posters and other assets have become part of the online engagement with film marketing and actors are going to have to get used it. Increased access to AI image generators is only going to make it more common.

Wicked will reach cinemas on 22 November in the United States and 27 November in the UK. Wicked Part Two is scheduled to be released on in November 2025. For more poster inspiration, see our pick of the best movie posters of 2024 so far.