After almost a year of waiting, the 2025 movie release of Wicked: For Good will finally complete Elphaba and Glinda’s journey. With Wicked split into two parts, audiences will experience the full depth of the two witches’ friendship, Emerald City’s complexities and the musical’s core songs without sacrificing any magic. However, director Jon M. Chu got real about originally hating what was going on with the initial script, and that taking a chance on two movies wasn’t for the faint of heart.
While teasing Wicked: For Good at the London Film Festival (via Deadline), Jon M. Chu talked about what went into splitting the beloved Broadway musical into two parts. But as the American film director got real about what the original script looked like as a single movie, I’d say he made the right call:
When I came in, what I read was like a 200-something page script that was cobbled together, and it felt like a mishmash. It didn’t feel like a real movie.
I understand what Jon M. Chu was talking about. After all, the original stage musical had an intermission in the same place as the ending of its 2024 movie adaptation. Given how layered and emotional the Tony-winning musical was, it would be a disservice to musical theatre fans if its long-awaited movie was cut too much or left out what fans loved.
Splitting a final movie into two may be a good way to enhance the conclusion of a beloved franchise, but it can be questionable to audiences and the film’s team. For example, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows director David Heyman said filming Part 1 was a “great challenge,” feeling the first half was a “road movie” to build up to the Battle of Hogwarts in Part 2. Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence said he “totally regrets” splitting Mockingjay, leaving fans in a cliffhanger until a year later for Part 2.
Chu continued to talk about how it was “already a debate” at Universal for years about whether or not to split Wicked. Even he was skeptical about whether having two parts would be the right move:
I thought, let’s see how they work out. Because you’re never going to get two great movies. You’re going to end on Defying Gravity: How do you make that the emotional core of the movie so it feels satisfying? They’re not confronted with wizards. That’s not what the story is about in movie one. Glinda doesn’t make the big decision in the end. So this has got to be Elphaba’s journey, so you have to go backwards. We have to see her childhood.
That’s absolutely true, as the Oscar-winning adaptation taught us about Elphaba being born green-skinned and facing ostracism growing up as a result. But that’s all the more reason why its first half was a success. Elphaba’s arc as “The Wicked Witch of the West” was complete in choosing to stand up for her beliefs against the corrupt Wizard, even if that further cemented her as an outcast.
For Good, on the other hand, now has the chance to further explore Glinda’s story. Despite having a high position in the Emerald City, we’ll get a chance to see “The Witch of the North’s” inner turmoil of wanting to spread goodness to the citizens of Oz while serving under its crooked government. One of its new songs, “The Girl in the Bubble,” ought to provide fans more insight into the Glinda we see on the surface compared to who she is inside.
Like the movie’s songwriter, Stephen Schwartz, previously said, the Jon M. Chu adaptation had to be split into two movies so nothing would be cut out, and for the “Defying Gravity” number to really end the movie with a bang like the musical did. In terms of For Good, Chu said he knew that Part One would be building up to what fans of the movie and stage musical had been waiting to see for its second half:
We had to really build all of that into this movie. Otherwise, we’d be at the end of movie one, and we would just have the Wicked theater fans, which are great, but you need more than that.
While it’s good that the Wicked adaptation stayed loyal to its theatre fans, its split into two movies helped film fans learn about the Oz they thought they knew, as well as the complex friendship between Elphaba and Glinda. The heart and magic that Jon M. Chu helped bring to life were able to touch a global audience and create a larger fanbase than before.
Given cinema’s history of splitting two movies, Jon M. Chu knew it would be a risk to bring that trend to Wicked. But given its rave reviews, huge pre-Thanksgiving box office record, and scoring ten nominations at the 2025 Academy Awards, this musical movie proved to be the exception in giving audiences a developed story while holding to what made people love Wicked in the first place. Get ready to see how the magical story concludes, as Wicked: For Good soars into theaters on November 21st.