Universal’s two-film adaptation of hit stage musical Wicked is a gamble that has already paid off, creatively and commercially. Director Jon M Chu tells Screen about the choices he made in four key scenes.
With its worldwide receipts shooting past $500m at press time, Wicked has only needed a few weeks to become one of 2024’s top 10 box-office hits. It has also received four Golden Globe and 11 Critics Choice nominations.
To quote the opening number of Jon M Chu’s film, that is indeed “good news” for a Universal title that represents a major investment for the studio. The decision to spread the story of the 2003 Broadway musical that inspired it over two features is looking an increasingly astute one, with sequel Wicked: For Good set for a November 2025 release.
Chu has experience of adapting stage shows for the screen, having previously directed the 2021 film version of In The Heights. He also directed 2018 romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians and two instalments in the Step Up franchise. Screen International spoke to the US filmmaker about four scenes in Wicked, a prequel to The Wizard Of Oz exploring the friendship that develops between green-skinned outcast Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and popular classmate Galinda (Ariana Grande) at Oz’s Shiz University. Beware, some spoilers follow.
Glinda appears in Munchkinland
The scene: In a story-setting opening sequence, news spreads across Oz that the Wicked Witch of the West is dead. Good witch Glinda — previously known as Galinda — then floats into Munchkinland to confirm the glad tidings.
Jon M Chu: “The opening shot drops the audience into the most infamous crime scene that’s ever been captured, the place where the witch was melted. I wanted to subvert people’s expectations with how the movie begins. Then when the flying monkeys come and we burst through the window, it was all about establishing that Oz is a real place. For our movie and our purposes, this had to be a real land that had real culture and history.
“I love the smash cut to the Munchkin kids running through the tulip fields. We had planted 9 million tulips to make it feel real. The sun flares at us, so we know that it’s a real sun. The main thing was making it feel physical and touchable and immersive.
“We have a beautiful shot of a Munchkin coming out of a house — we’re in the darkness, the door opens up and we come out into the colour. The building was too shallow for a Technocrane, so we built a fake deck with a door that split in half. There was a lot of engineering with our grips and everybody in construction to enable the camera to come out and coast over the marketplace.
“Having Glinda come down in a bubble was tricky. How pink is the bubble? How opaque? Do we show her face as it comes down, or do we reveal it when she pops the bubble? Production designer Nathan Crowley did a bunch of different designs and that’s when it started to click; it felt like her royal chariot. What we don’t see in this movie is how it’s built — there are gears and things that actually make it float.
“The whole opening was hard. We had to invite the audience back to Oz and remind them of its iconic images and bring that nostalgic feel. We had to immerse them in it and say this is a real place. Then we had to introduce a character who’s gone through a lot of stuff the audience has no idea about. That sequence alone we recut many times — there was so much information to give to the audience.
“We used to have the title card over the Emerald City, after we see the four witch hunters [Dorothy and friends]. It felt like the movie was beginning, but what we found was the audience didn’t know how to take it all in. When we moved the title to where we go back in time to Shiz, it made a huge difference.”
Fiyero dances in the Shiz library
The scene While inspecting Shiz University’s library with a smitten Galinda, Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) expounds his carefree philosophy of ‘Dancing Through Life’. As he sings and dances, students cavort on the rotating bookshelves.
Chu: “The tornado wheel — we used to call it the hamster wheel but I hated the name — had three chambers that could spin independently, so a huge amount of engineering had to go into it. Our choreographer Chris Scott didn’t know what dancers could do inside until it had been built. He didn’t even know what kind of dancers to hire. Is he hiring stunt people? Parkour people? Are we having b-boys [break dancers]?
“Insurance did not want to put Jonathan and dancers in there because it was all manual and they could have been beheaded if the timing was off. Because it’s handmade, there were no accurate controls. It was built from the ground up and manually run by stunt people, not by dancers and people necessarily with rhythm.
“Creatively, Chris and his team developed this amazing dance. We wanted it to feel like Fiyero was breaking the rules and loosening things up. Jonathan was shooting other things at the same time so we didn’t know if he could do all the dance. But he learned it and was amazing.
“In every set we always said, ‘Where’s the delight? Where’s that one piece of strangeness to it?’ What made it Oz for us was delight as distraction — everything had to have a little spin on reality. That’s how the circular stuff happened in there — it couldn’t just be a library of straight rows. We didn’t want to have walls either. We wanted it to feel open.
“Nathan’s work was figuring out how to do a library in the round. At one point he was like, ‘These columns will cost a lot more to make if we have weight on them. Do you think you will have dancers stand on them?’ I was like, ‘I’m not gonna lie, we probably will.’ So he had to build things that could be weight-bearing.
“Chris, [cinematographer] Alice Brooks and I did 30 episodes of web series The Legion Of Extraordinary Dancers. Each episode was in a different genre and we found all the ways of how to use dance. We learned the same lessons on that so we’re all connected in our brains. So when I went to go have a baby on one of the library days, Chris and Alice were able to take over. They say work with your friends but this is more than that. We’re co-authors and it’s really fun.”
Elphaba dances in the Ozdust Ballroom
The scene: Elphaba’s arrival in the Ozdust Ballroom in the pointed hat Galinda has given her prompts sniggering derision. She defiantly improvises an unusual solo dance routine and, in an act of solidarity, Galinda replicates her moves.
Chu: “When I first entered Wicked, I learned something [composer] Stephen Schwartz, [writer] Winnie Holzman and [producer] Marc Platt would always say, ‘It’s the girls, stupid.’ They did it for 20 years and that helped in a moment like this. It’s the moment when the girls come together.
“In the show, this scene is sort of a joke — Elphaba does weird shapes and we laugh. But Cynthia was like, ‘It’s not funny to me. This is a moment where I’m vulnerable. Elphaba’s been taught to control her emotions and her powers, but the actual lesson is I have to surrender to myself. I have to accept this is who I am, no matter what the consequences may be.’
“When we created the movement for the scene, it was very early on in the process and one of the first things we rehearsed together. Chris and Cynthia created this thing together in this beautiful way. Ariana learned a little bit of the dance but not the whole thing. So when they are looking at each other and she steps forward, they are having real conversations with their eyes.
“No words were added — it’s just their performances, and Alice with the camera. It was us saying, ‘Let’s restrain ourselves. Let’s be in silence in the middle of a musical number’ — which we got a lot of pushback for — ‘and let’s calm our camera. We don’t have to whip it all around. Let’s be there with them and just watch.’ It was the most uncomfortable scene to shoot, and because we did long takes the background artists felt uncomfortable laughing.
“Bless Karsten [Jacobsen], our A-camera operator. He’s spinning around with an Alexa 65 and if he misses the emotion, we can’t stop and go back. We had a shallow depth of field and I think 500 lighting cues were created so we could see Cynthia’s eyes no matter what. That is what we are watching in that scene — all those things coming together.
“Alice and I always talked about the truth is in the darkness and the lie is in the light. ‘Dancing Through Life’ is a lie, for instance, so there is a lot of light coming in. By the time we get to the Ozdust, we’re playing in the shadows. We’re below the water — water is a big symbol in this myth — and the truth here is as raw as possible.”
Elphaba and Glinda arrive in Emerald City
The scene: Elphaba and Galinda (now Glinda) arrive on the Emerald City Express to find a metropolis full of wonder. As the citizens sing ‘One Short Day’, they prepare to meet the Wizard and learn about Oz’s mythical past.
Chu: “When we were building the set for ‘One Short Day’, it was late in our schedule and we were basically out of money. But Nathan is a troublemaker; he was like, ‘Do you guys want a great Emerald City or not?’ We all knew this was our opportunity to do the Emerald City on a big movie screen.
“We filmed it as if Elphaba and Glinda were on a ride; that’s why the camera goes first-person. We also wanted to feel the physical nature of the place and feel as if you were there. Cutting around wouldn’t do that, it would just feel like a montage. With the 1939 movie, you don’t get the sense you’re fully immersed.
“Paul Tazewell did the costumes and no two outfits could be the same. We have people of all shapes and sizes and their costumes have to be unique to who they are. It’s one straight shot and it’s full of hundreds of people — taller people, shorter people, those in wheelchairs. It’s a dream of what a city can be at its best.
“As a fan of the stage musical, I knew we had to have [original stars] Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. I had played with them in different roles in my head but it was never good enough. It always felt we weren’t playing to their strengths. But there was a moment in ‘One Short Day’ where we added back story. We needed to know what the Grimmerie was, and how the Wizard arrived. What if we made the history of Oz an actual show and put Idina and Kristin in it? They would have a real purpose in this movie.
“We had them for one night so we snuck them into London. It was rainy and windy and we kept having to dry things off. But it felt very healing for all of us to be together. We have Stephen and Winnie cameos too, so it’s all the original gang back.
“The mix is a whole other thing. You don’t want to step on the lyrics or the orchestration, but I like to feel the Foley. I like to feel people walking and the water happening and the projection of the Wizard. There’s a lot to talk about, man.”
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