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Wicked Film Drops, Internet Loses Plot, Theatre Box Office Says “Thank You Very Much”

4 Dec 2025

There is nothing quite like a Hollywood release to remind everyone that theatre existed first. The new Wicked film fluttered onto screens in late November, all emerald shimmer and studio gloss, and within hours London Theatre Direct was apparently watching its analytics light up like someone had accidentally typed “defy gravity” into Google Trends.

No spells, no broomsticks, just traffic spikes

According to their data, the film’s opening weekend delivered a neat 50 per cent jump in visits to the Wicked stage-show page compared with the weekend before. Pageviews were up 53 per cent, which suggests people weren’t just clicking once before wandering back to whatever streaming platform had distracted them. Even on-site searches for “Wicked” climbed by 30 per cent. Three decades into the internet age and people still treat website search bars like a séance.

Stretch it out to the full week and the pattern doesn’t wobble. From 17 to 23 November, users viewing the wickedly familiar green-tinted show page rose by 21 per cent, with pageviews up 22 per cent. Searches almost doubled, a 97 per cent leap that feels suitably theatrical. And the orders followed suit: new customers up 24 per cent, returning ones up 48 per cent. Apparently nothing nudges loyalty quite like a film reminding you of that show you promised yourself you’d finally book.

London Theatre Direct’s CEO, Johan Oosterveld, offered the calm, sensible version of events. A big-screen event lands, audiences remember the original, and everyone rushes back to check ticket prices. It is the circle of life, but with witches. He noted that renewed attention “introduces entirely new audiences to the possibility of experiencing the magic live on stage,” which is the sort of line you can almost hear being emailed at speed between marketing departments. Still, the numbers do back him up.

Everything here comes from aggregated, anonymised data, which feels appropriately modern: no spells, no broomsticks, just traffic spikes and people clicking the same link repeatedly because they forgot to bookmark it.

Yet there’s something oddly cheering in the whole thing. After all the noise about films overshadowing theatre, the opposite has happened again. The moment Elphaba swoops into the cinema, audiences remember the West End is still sitting there doing it eight times a week without CGI.

Related to this article:

Wicked