According To The variety Director Jon M. Chu has spent more than five years bringing the beloved Broadway musical “Wicked” to the big screen. Now that both installments are complete, he’s reflecting on the epic scope of the project.
“It is one movie to me,” Chu tells Variety during an upcoming episode of the Awards Circuit Podcast, recorded at last weekend’s 13th annual Middleburg Film Festival. “When I was thinking of every arc, we were thinking of it as one giant chunk.”
The same could be said for this “Part One” of Chu’s sprawling, in-depth interview about the musical that consumed the past five years of his life. He began the project as a father of two — and wrapped as a father of five. In fact, his fifth child was born the day “Wicked” premiered, preventing him from attending. Chu’s assertion firmly places him on one side of a debate that has long intrigued cinephiles, particularly the one surrounding Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, released between 2001 and 2003. Audiences have debated whether those films should be considered three separate movies or one singular cinematic work. Jackson himself has described the trilogy as one story told across three films, shot simultaneously over a single production period.
Now Chu finds himself in similar territory, having crafted an epic musical in two parts that he views as inseparable halves of a whole.
The first installment, “Wicked,” opened in 2024, introducing audiences to Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s Glinda. The film received 10 Academy Award nominations, including best picture. However, Chu was not among the five nominees for best director — making him one of only two directors in history whose films have earned 10 nominations without a directing nod. The other is Denis Villeneuve, for “Dune” (2021).
The highly anticipated sequel “Wicked: For Good,” which is set to hit theaters in November, completes the journey, one that Chu says has lived in his head for years.
“When you live with something for five-plus years, and you dream about it and you wake up with nightmares right in front of you, it sticks with you,” he says, half-joking. “I have not processed it yet.”
Chu describes the process of saying goodbye as unexpectedly emotional.
“Everyone was very emotional, and I couldn’t feel it yet,” he reflects. “I was like, ‘No, I’ll see you next week.’ But I think the office is empty now, which is really sad.”
Taking on “Wicked,” undoubtedly one of Broadway’s most beloved and fiercely protected properties, was not a decision Chu made lightly. From the moment Universal announced him as director, the expectations were enormous.
“Everyone has an opinion about ‘Wicked,’” Chu says, smirking. “Everyone has an opinion about ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ all the different versions — from ‘The Wiz’ to the original — everyone has their own way. And with the internet, everybody has a microphone. So I felt the knives out.”
The pressure extended beyond fan expectations. The project was greenlit during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a moment when movie musicals were considered risky, and romantic comedies had fallen out of favor.
“There were times that I would lay on the ground in my kitchen after just prep and be like, ‘I don’t know. I hope this all works out,’” he admits. “But I love this job because we can take big swings. It’s the only medium where you can get thousands of people to build a spaceship, essentially, and take people to another planet.”
For Chu, fear is part of the job.
“If you’re not going to take a giant swing, what are you doing here?” he says. “This is why I fell in love with movies. Watching ‘E.T.’ or ‘Batman’ or ‘Jaws,’ where we all gather and experience something bigger than ourselves.”
Chu promises that “Wicked: For Good” will be more than merely a continuation. It’s the emotional culmination of everything built in the first film. “Once you see ‘Movie Two,’ you cannot forget it. It will always be tied to your movie one experience,” he teases. The director says audiences should expect a deeper, more mature tone that pushes the story’s emotional and visual boundaries.
“It’s the moment where everything we’ve set up — the friendship, the heartbreak, the magic — comes crashing together,” Chu explains. “When you get to that last song, when they sing ‘For Good,’ it’s going to hit like a freight train. I’ve lived with this story for five years, and I still cry every time.”
Nonetheless, Chu says he’s finally ready to close a chapter. “It’s one big story to me, and now, finally, I get to let it go.”
