Less than 24 hours after unveiling exclusive Wicked footage in Las Vegas, filmmaker Jon M. Chu found his way into the spotlight of another CinemaCon stage inside Caesars Palace, this time for a special luncheon in his honor at which he revealed secrets about filming the two-part epic musical.
“It was pretty magical last night,” Chu told The Hollywood Reporter’s co-editor-in-chief Nekesa Mumbi Moody, who moderated a fireside chat with the filmmaker after he was presented a trophy for cultural impact in filmmaking (by his In the Heights star Ariana Greenblatt). Chu has been in the editing room while managing a full household of four young children, so he said that being in Las Vegas where he could sleep and hang out with others, “I’m, like, ‘Let’s go.’”
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Chu, fresh from the Colosseum stage where he appeared during Universal Pictures’ slate presentation, opened up on the 30-minute Wicked segment that lit up the festivities and featured Chu, producer Marc Platt, leading ladies Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, along with other members of the starry cast including Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum.
The filmmaker got choked up during that presentation (as did Grande) while he was speaking about casting Erivo to play Elphaba and Grande as Glinda, and Moody asked him to source the emotions of that moment. Chu said that there was no guarantee they would make Wicked had they not been able to find actors capable of taking on the demanding parts. “When you find those two, you know it’s destiny,” he said, adding it was a spiritual connection as well.
“We’ve gone through so many journeys together,” Chu continued of his actors. Grande and Erivo both went through “personal things” in their lives to find the truth in these characters. He also experienced a transformational time as his family and career expanded. “That’s why it had that impact on me.”
Chu also traced the impact Wicked has had on his life. He recalled that when he was a young filmmaker in college, his mother called him to share that she had secured tickets for a then-early stage musical called Wicked that was playing at The Curran Theatre in San Francisco. His mother had been going through chemotherapy at the time. “It was one of the best experiences of my life with her,” he said.
Even then, while the show was still in the workshop stage before heading to Broadway, where it became a cultural phenomenon, Chu said he pictured it as a movie. “When they get on that train, I could picture it in my head,” he said. “I saw [Elphaba] not on a wire but up in the sky … I saw her cape flying in the wind like Superman but even longer and darker, like fucking cool as shit.”
Moody then asked Chu about the decision to split Wicked into two parts rather than make one long film in the four-hour range. “It has to be two parts for it to be something the fans recognize,” he said, referencing how the Broadway show itself is split into parts with an intermission in between. “Those two parts have to feel like a movie, you should want more but you can’t be unsatisfied emotionally when you finish the first.”
He also said, “There’s a five-hour version, do we want that? Maybe in time.” Chu revealed that decisions were made — and are still being made — about what iconic lines and scenes to keep. And because the property is so beloved by so many, the cast and crew would constantly check one another to see what would work. “Ari is an aficionado on Wicked,” he said of his star, so she would often say, “That’s bible, you can’t remove that line.”
Wicked hits theaters in time for Thanksgiving, on Nov. 27. A sequel, Wicked Part Two, is set to be released Nov. 26, 2025. Chu’s directing career dates back to the early aughts. His credits include Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3D, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Jem and the Holograms, Now You See Me 2, Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, along with a slew of music videos and documentary features like Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never. He’s got a big year taking shape in 2024 with the rollout of Wicked, and it was just announced that on July 23, Chu will release a memoir, Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen, in partnership with Random House and co-author Jeremy McCarter.
His last musical, In the Heights, hit amid the pandemic and debuted in theaters at the same time it went on HBO Max in a controversial move by the company’s former boss Jason Kilar that was dubbed “Project Popcorn.” Chu said that time taught him the importance of theatrical, to huge applause from the ballroom crowd. “That was a hard time. It was heartbreaking,” Chu explained, adding that it was a tricky time for all. “I didn’t make In the Heights to [be released on streaming].”
Moody also asked about another tough scenario for Chu with the actors strike, which forced Wicked to shut down production with only 10 days left of shooting. He said that they had been saving some of “the big stunty singing stuff” for later in the shoot so that Erivo could have time to train to fly on wires while also belting out “Defying Gravity.”
When the strike was called, it took him some time to process, and the same went for Erivo. “I spent however many days talking to her almost daily to help let go of the character for a moment before coming back.”
Rolling with change, and also paving some along the way, has been a hallmark of Chu’s career. It’s also the essence of Wicked, Chu said. “I remember the words from Elphaba,” he said, nodding to how life is different after the pandemic. “She says, ‘Something has changed within me. Something is not the same.’ I thought that was so relevant. I think everyone feels that. Something is different.”
In that way, “Wicked was prophetic, even if it was about a different time,” he concluded. “I think this movie, at this time, of course it’s going to be so fun. It’s going to be the adventure of a lifetime.”
