A theatregoer with a ticket to watch Wicked was told by staff to wipe off her green face paint before entering the cinema.
READ MORE: Everything we know about ‘Wicked Part Two’
In a TikTok shared by @celineserrano84, the Wicked fan shows off her Elphaba cosplay via green face paint before attending a screening at a local AMC theatre.
Her excitement on the way was quickly squashed by rejection at the theatre lobby by local staff, who had apparently told her that she could only enter if she washed her face paint off.
“This is the dumbest rule I’ve ever heard,” she said in the clip. She later adds that she was permitted into the screening after abiding by the rule.
USA Today reported a statement by AMC Theatres, which reads: “[Face] paint, helmets, masks, (except for standard face masks used explicitly for health and safety reasons), or anything that covers the face are prohibited.”
“Seeing some people on tiktok getting in with facepaint – why not me??!!”, @celineserrano84 writes in the clip’s caption, tagging AMC’s TikTok account.
@AMC Theatres seeing some people on tiktok getting in with facepaint – why not me??!! #wicked #elphaba #amctheaters #wickedmovie #wickedthemusical #facepaint
♬ No One Mourns The Wicked – Kristin Chenoweth & Sean McCourt & Cristy Candler & Jan Neuberger
With a combined $270million (£214.6milion) in worldwide ticket sales over the weekend, Wicked was the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2. It was also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.
Wicked hit cinemas in the UK and US on November 22, and it’s predicted by cinema bosses to be the biggest film of the year.
Jon M. Chu’s film debuted with $114million (£90.6million) domestically and $164.2million (£130.5million) globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates.
Reviewing the movie, which stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo and is an adaptation of the stage musical which tells the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, NME awarded it four stars and said the “hit musical makes a gravity-defying leap to the big screen”.
“Funny, colourful and full of empathy for outsiders, this film really is the Shiz,” it added.
Wicked Part Two is slated for a cinema release on November 21, 2025, and you can check out everything we know about it so far, here.
On stage, the darker second act of Wicked sees Elphaba hunted by The Wizard and his forces. The end of the story ties into the events of The Wizard Of Oz, where plucky farmgirl Dorothy ends up melting Elphaba with a bucket of water. However the Wicked book has a lot more murky political themes than the musical, so it’s expected that some of that will also feature in Part Two.
The post ‘Wicked’ fan told to wipe off green face paint before entering cinema appeared first on NME.
