Back in March, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande appeared on the Oscars red carpet. Together, they presented the award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score. Erivo wore a sleek, dark green leather gown with dramatic sleeves, while Grande wore a bubblegum pink gown with oversized puffy sleeves and many folds of a train.
The pair were not-so-subtly marketing their upcoming November movie adaption of Wicked (2024), the sensational Broadway musical. Grande, playing Glinda, will be decked out in pink throughout both parts of the promotion of Wicked — part one of the movie will premiere this November and the second part will premiere in November 2025. Erivo is playing Elphaba, the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West.
The actors appeared again at a Paris Olympics event, both in their assigned colors. The world is likely to see the actors wearing only pink and green until the movies have made their way through the press circuit; anytime Erivo and Grande appear at events, they are intentionally reminding you to watch their movie and contribute to its cinematic success. Even by writing about them, we are playing into the movie’s marketing plans to be on your mind as much as possible.
This type of strategic marketing is nothing new, at least in the last few years: Margot Robbie spent most of the Barbie (2023) press tour wearing pink, channeling Barbie’s archival closet into her red carpet looks. Zendaya wore tennis-themed outfits, more “athletic” looks, and tennis-ball-green during the Challengers (2024) press tour — Zendaya dressed on-theme for Spider-Man and Dune press events as well.
This is what Law Roach, Zendaya’s longtime stylist, calls “method dressing.” While in method acting, actors embody their character by deeply exploring their physical, mental, and emotional selves to experience their character more authentically, method dressing creates the universe for the audience before even stepping into the movie.
Although the genre of “method dressing” has been recently connected to Zendaya, Robbie, and other modern stars, the relationship between the film industry and the fashion industry goes back to the time of silent films.
“Fashion has always been cinema’s best friend when it comes to promotion,” says Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén, a Hollywood fashion historian, Fulbright scholar, and research fellow at the University of Southern California.
Janet Leigh, for example, wore a dress for the 1960 premiere of Pepe that she also wore in the film. While the marketing through method dressing we’ve seen for Barbie and Wicked has reached new heights, the relationship between cinema and fashion is evergreen.
But behind the fun that comes with this newer style of method dressing, there are also negatives, according to Castaldo Lundén. Though it was common for actresses like Leigh or Marilyn Monroe to wear dresses multiple times, this trend of outrageously-themed outfits turns talent to using and wearing outfits only once.
“What kind of message is this leaving behind?” she asks.
Beyond the aspect of sustainability, the widespread intensity of this fad could also be leaving audiences exhausted, Castaldo Lundén adds, even admitting herself that though she’s enjoying all things Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), she was expecting Jenna Ortega’s method dressing and isn’t so excited about it anymore. The only interest it brings, in a way that Wicked hasn’t captured yet, is the crew’s ability to tie in the older movie, and “bring the old into the present.”
In Castaldo Lundén’s opinion, Wicked needs to capture and include audiences in the way that Barbie did — by making the involvement feel like tradition rather than a copycat.
“We’ve lived in an era of social media for so long,” she says. “Forgetting about the audience is a big mistake.”
In the end, “its about attracting more audiences [for the film industry], creating more media coverage to talk about the movie,” she continued. “They do it through the people’s interest in visual aspects, and fashion, and wardrobe, and excess.”
The hype and marketing around Barbie grossed the movie 1.4 billion dollars worldwide and around 9 million people went to see it in theaters. Robbie’s outfits were even turned into a coffee table book, called Barbie: The World Tour. Though the Internet drew some negativity to the movie, especially surrounding discussions of race and gender, the general reception of the movie was highly positive — as was the audience’s ability to dress up with Robbie.
Strategic marketing, however, goes beyond intentional fashion. And just like intentional fashion, this has been around for a long time too, Castaldo Lundén adds, citing stories about Tony Curtis and other Hollywood actors whose relationships were rushed to the tabloids.
So far, Wicked’s strategic marketing — what could be called method marketing, an endeavor to create the universe around the movie, beyond just the outfits on the red carpet — has yielded positive results. Erivo and Grande’s pink and green appearances have garnered massive attention to contribute to the movie’s hype. The movie even released a featurette on the making of the movie and the creation of the stars’ strong friendship. The producers used Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship to compare the strength of Grande and Erivo’s friendship.
Sometimes, though, major strategic marketing can grow deeply negative. Don’t Worry Darling (2022), surrounded by the news of director Olivia Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles and the breakdown of her relationship with Jason Sudeikis, in addition to rumors of tensions between much of the cast and Chris Pine, allowed for intense negative attention to overshadow the movie.
This genre of negative marketing attention has also surrounded It Ends With Us (2024), the big-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, as rumors and comments about cast tensions have taken over the film’s press circuit. Star of the movie Blake Lively has been criticized for promoting her own endeavors and encouraging viewers to “wear their florals” at the theater while her costar, Justin Baldoni, has used the press tour as a platform to discuss the perils of domestic violence, which plays a central role in the movie’s plot.
Engaging in this sort of marketing is, to an extent, a gamble; the overuse of strategic marketing could bore or annoy people, or end in a PR nightmare as it did for It Ends With Us. But with the biggest blockbusters continuing to embrace this kind of large-scale universe-building in their press tours, the film industry doesn’t seem to be letting go of the trend anytime soon.
Whether Wicked’s marketing will continue to be well-received over the next two years remains to be seen. If one thing’s certain, it’s that we’ll be seeing Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo sporting pink and green for many months to come.
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