KPop Demon Hunters is a huge hit—both the record-breaking movie itself and its record-breaking soundtrack album. No doubt Netflix has already started having Oscar dreams, with nominations all but guaranteed in the Best Animated Feature as well as Best Original Song categories. The biggest hit is even titled “Golden,” just like the statuette! But another musical on the horizon would like you to remember the votes aren’t tallied yet.
That would be Wicked: For Good, the follow-up to last year’s very successful Wicked—which notched 10 Oscar nominations and picked up a pair for its lavish costumes and production design. (It also answered fan demand by holding “singalong” screenings, as KPop Demon Hunters also did recently.)
But one category it didn’t enter into was Best Original Song, since Wicked‘s numbers all came from the long-running Broadway musical. That didn’t stop the Academy Awards from bringing stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo out to sing onstage, and now it seems Wicked: For Good is hoping for a return visit.
As Variety reports, confirming remarks Jon M. Chu made to Entertainment Weekly last week, Wicked: For Good‘s soundtrack will feature two new songs, one for each of its witchy leads. Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the original Wicked songs for the 2003 musical, penned both; today their titles were confirmed as “No Place Like Home,” for Erivo’s Elphaba, and “The Girl in the Bubble,” for Grande’s Glinda.
As Variety notes, both songs “are expected to be Oscar-eligible, unlike any of the songs from the first movie, which had added verses but did not feature any completely new songs.”
In a statement to the trade, Schwartz said, “In addition to two brand new songs, there is a lot that’s new in several other existing songs. So not only listeners coming to the score for the first time, but long-time fans of the original Broadway cast album, will have a great deal to discover.”
Don’t expect to get more than teases of the new material before the movie, though: Wicked: For Good and its soundtrack both release November 21. Do you predict either of the new songs will be a threat to KPop Demon Hunters when awards season rolls around?
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