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Just How Glicked Will the 2025 Oscars Get?
Denzel Washington will take his third statue now.
Whether you call it “Glicked” or “Wickiator” (or even Justin Chang ’s preferred “Wadiator,” which sounds to me like a lot of hot air), this weekend’s simultaneous arrival of Gladiator II and Wicked feels like the closest thing we’ve seen to a true heir of “ Barbenheimer.” The comparison is inevitable — two huge films releasing on the same day, one girl-coded and one boy-coded — and perfectly reasonable, as long as you abandon any assumption that they will match or surpass the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon. But I wouldn’t be gobsmacked if Gladiator snuck in, as well: It’s an old-school masculine epic that could appeal to the Academy’s “meat and potatoes” voters, a bloc powerful enough to get films like Top Gun: Maverick and Ford v Ferrari into the Best Picture category in the past. The pop star is awfully winning her first major film role — she had cameos in Zoolander 2 and Don’t Look Up — turning in a performance that, as our own Bilge Ebiri writes, “gives real comic shape to Glinda’s popular-girl frivolity.” With Wicked ’s Oscar buzz growing by the day, more pundits expect Grande to get in than not.
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