You wouldn’t know it from the trailers but it’ll be very obvious once the lights go down. Wicked, which hits theaters this week, is just part one of the story. It’s right there in the film’s title when it begins (the title card says “Wicked Part One”) and it’s the last thing you’re reminded of at the end (“To be continued” fills the screen). This has been public knowledge since April of 2022 but it wasn’t a big selling point, for obvious reasons. Audiences don’t like to know they’re only getting half a movie. Just ask Tom Cruise.
Recently io9 spoke to Wicked director Jon M. Chu, who not only defended the decision, he explained how it was one of the key decisions that made the movie possible at all. Read about that, as well as how the second film impacted shooting, below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. We’ll have more from Chu later this week.
Germain Lussier, io9: Were you part of the decision to make Wicked into two films?
Jon M. Chu: Yes for sure. [Universal] was dancing back and forth and I think that was part of the problem of getting it started. They kept going “Oh it’s one movie, no it’s two movies.” I had to come and be like, “We need to make a choice with this.” You cannot make a good one movie or two movies by dancing back and forth. Commit to two movies right now, otherwise, we’re never making those two movies good. I promise you that. We can always change our minds, but we cannot think about it right now. That’s what we committed to. And once you commit to that, then you can pull this thing apart and find what we need to. The plot holes we need to fill, and the things we need to build to build up to “Defying Gravity.” So that was a big choice.
io9: Knowing you had to make this film satisfying on its own, how did you go about achieving that?
Chu: It was really about moving backward from “Defying Gravity.” What we discovered was the perspective of the movie had to be different than the show. In the show, Galinda comes down on her bubble and she’s basically the host of the night. It’s sort of vaudevillian. She’s going to bring you into the story. She’s going to take you out of the story. We don’t have the other side of that to go with. Eventually we will, but not this one. In a weird way, the audience is with her at the beginning of the theater show because this green girl pops in and she’s the outlier. That’s the weird one. Whereas in the movie, the audience has to accept the world that you’re building for the first 10 minutes. So they’re singing and dancing, which is still an oddity in a movie. And then the normal green girl walks in and she’s like, “What the hell did I just walk into?” That joke is different. That one-liner joke is very different in this.
And when that changes, now we’re with that girl. Now we get to see her in her youth and be teased. We get to root for her in this musical world. She’s like “Why is everyone singing?” And then in “The Wizard and I” you hear the little whisper of her voice and you see “Oh she sings as beautifully as any of them and she’s going to go for that. Wow. It’s in her.” So you’re using the form of the musical to actually help evoke the story and that helps push it to the next level. Now you’re like, “What do we want for that girl?” And if we follow that path, that’s what we did. Okay, then how does she move into a dorm room and meet Galinda? You can’t just have another song just to have them at each other’s throats. What is that awkward thing? What are they discovering about each other? Why do they need each other ultimately? So we’re discovering a lot of things in that scene. So there’s little moments that we just track along the way to help make “Defying Gravity” the end of this movie. Complete your emotional journey, satisfy choices made, then the second movie is the consequences.
io9: How did you feel about the marketing decision to not put “Part One” or any singing in the trailers?
Chu: I mean, marketing has its own strategy for all those things. I think we were pretty clear that there are two parts from the very beginning. I had a statement, did the whole thing, everyone reacted. I knew that there was going to be a certain reaction. But I also knew that when you actually look at the nuts and bolts of it, it was very clear. There was no question. Either it’s not Wicked and you’re stripping out all these songs or you’re changing the story so much that it’s not going to be the Wicked that you want. I knew we were making the right choice, so we went along with that and marketing—how they do it, I don’t know how they do it. But I understood what those choices were.
And I felt like everybody knew it was a musical anyway. We had musical trailers and things like that. What people don’t think about, and this is difficult, is when you’re actually cutting a trailer, when you have music in there and they’re singing, moving their mouths, all the songs are in different keys. And how do you jump from one song to another in an organic, trailer way, where you only have two minutes to do it? It’s actually, technically, very difficult. And they were dancing at different rhythms and things. It becomes a mess very quickly. So even the ones we did release, I thought it was impossible to cut all those songs together. And they found certain things and they had to pitch things differently and it’s not exactly how I would love to do it, but it does connect the songs and you need to do that. But it’s technically very challenging. It’s not just a choice that, “Oh, we can’t.” How do you go from “The Wizard and I” to “Defying Gravity” without changing the key? It’s very difficult.
io9: Tell me a little bit about the filming process for both films and why you decided that.
Chu: We shot them at the same time. So it was sort of block shooting, I guess. But locations had to change. Munchkinland is sort of our town square in Back to the Future where it’s constantly changing. The house is now crashed in there, and the house is not there. It’s before the Yellow Brick Road is built there, and then when the Yellow Brick Road is there. So that became a centerpiece. We had to move in and move out of that location according to what part of the movie. We also had different actor times. You know, you get Michelle Yeoh for a certain amount of time. She’s up for an Oscar at that time so you’re “All right, we’ve got to shoot all of her stuff right here.” So there are logistical reasons for that. But I’m really glad we did because I think going out of it and going back in would be very difficult.
We had to do that for the strike. We had to come back to do “Defying Gravity,” which was emotionally difficult for Cynthia [Erivo] and Ari [Grande]. [Erivo] had trained a year to do those stunts and to know where to put her voice. And suddenly for six months she’s not doing it. Then she has to come back. For us, it actually really helped in the end because we got to gather our energy again. We had been shooting for 160 days at that point. And I think she dropped in so quickly and easily. And Ari also dropped in really easily. They were these characters and it was not as difficult as I thought it would be.
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That’s just a taste of our full interview with Chu. Check back soon for more on how he got involved with the production, his process, and the fascinating tale behind getting the show-stopping finale, “Finding Gravity,” just right. Wicked is in theaters Friday. Part Two is out next year.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.