The “Wicked” sequel “For Good” may not be hitting cinemas until Nov. 21, but director Jon M. Chu dropped by the BFI London Film Festival on Friday to offer a special sneak peak of the follow-up to Universal’s smash hit musical adaptation.
The director debuted a brand-new clip for the audience of his LFF for Free talk, featuring Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) visiting Glinda (Ariana Grande) on her wedding day. The emotional tease sees the two secretly reunite after the events of “Defying Gravity,” with Glinda dressed in a sparkling white gown, as Elphaba is being hunted down by the Wizard’s flying monkeys. A teary Glinda pleads with Elphaba to talk things out with the Wizard, but before she can finish her appeal, Elphaba is gone.
Chu also revealed that he did not employ digital effects for the characters of the Tin Man and Scarecrow — formerly Boq and Fiyero — in “For Good.” “By the way, wait until you see the Tin Man and the Scarecrow,” Chu teased. “These are not digital effects. These are real, physical make-up and hair and it is extraordinary. I couldn’t show you any footage here, but when you see it, know there was no room for error on it.”
As for the song “For Good,” which the sequel gets its title from, Chu said that Erivo and Grande’s performance of it is “the most beautiful, emotional version of it I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“That song is about literally what they’re doing with their eyes,” Chu said of shooting the “For Good” scene. “It’s the most covered song, it’s the song that everybody has heard many, many times and many different versions, but the advantage that we have in this is that you know these characters.”
He continued: “The way they were singing it to each other almost wasn’t singing, it was just like communicating. And you’ve got to just let them do it and let them drive. It became like, ‘Filmmakers, get out of the way.’”
Chu said he initially filmed the “For Good” scene with “sweeping” shots, and had it in the cut like that for seven months. But “it never sat right,” he said, revealing that he opted for a much more “intimate” feel.
Both “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good” were shot back-to-back in the U.K., primarily at NBCUniversal’s vast new Sky Studios Elstree facility. The first “Wicked” big screen adaptation, which released in late 2024, became an pop culture phenomenon and box office smash, earning more than $750 million at the box office — the fifth-highest grossing film of the year. It was named one of the best films of the year by the American Film Institute and Best Film by the National Board of Review, and went on to land 10 Oscar nominations — including best picture — eventually winning best costume design and best production design.
Chu also teased his next project after leaving Oz, a film adaptation of another hit stage music, this time Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s biblical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolur Dreamcoat.”
“It’s something that I hold dear to my heart,” he said of the project, being made for Amazon Studios and reuniting him with his “In the Heights” producer Scott Sanders. “It’s my favorite show, but it’s a hard one to preconceive for now and [decide] how to do it with the tone. But I love it so much and I think we’ve cracked something in there that’s really fun.”
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