{"id":217234,"date":"2025-10-11T17:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T17:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/217234\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T17:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T17:38:09","slug":"jon-m-chu-on-expanding-glinda-elphabas-stories-for-wicked-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/217234\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon M. Chu On Expanding Glinda & Elphaba\u2019s Stories For \u2018Wicked’ Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWicked<\/a>: For Good will feature new original songs for Ariana Grande\u2019s Glinda and Cynthia Erivo\u2019s Elphaba, which will expand their stories beyond their original stage play narratives, director Jon M. Chu<\/a> said this morning during a session at Deadline\u2019s Contenders London<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with Deadline\u2019s Baz Bamigboye, Chu said he remembered watching one of the first performances of the original Wicked stage play and always preferred the play\u2019s second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI saw the show before everyone on Broadway, so I was sort of patient zero. I remember what it felt like to watch this new Stephen Schwartz musical. And I thought the second half was the reason to be,\u201d Chu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou get all this set up and then she breaks out. And that\u2019s the fairytale side. The second half is their adult selves looking back at their dreams and their hopes and what they thought the world was and their stories, and all of it is shattered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo bring the weight of these decisions to a second film, Chu said he and his collaborators expanded several parts of the original production, including adding new songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor me, what I think the second half needed was to know more about these individual women\u2019s experiences,\u201d he said. \u201cHow lonely is it when you make a choice like that and you have to stand up to power and you feel like you\u2019re the only one doing it. That\u2019s a very heavy, lonely experience\u2026 And what happens when you\u2019re someone like Glinda who has this bubble of protection, where you don\u2019t ever have to deal with the truth if you don\u2019t want to. Are you able to pop your bubble of privilege? To me, those were the bigger questions of the Wicked saga.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChu added: \u201cWe needed more songs, because we needed more avenues into that mindset. Musicals are great because it\u2019s not about being bigger, it\u2019s about going deeper into these characters and minds and what they\u2019re going through. So we have new songs that allow us to witness how they go through these thoughts, and the audience can experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this week, we reported that Wicked: For Good<\/a> became Fandango<\/a>\u2018s best first-day ticket pre-seller of 2025, surpassing Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, and Superman.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWicked: For Good now ranks among Fandango\u2019s top 10 best all-time first-day ticket pre-sellers, which includes blockbusters like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour. Additionally, the film is the best PG-rated first-day ticket pre-seller of all time on the platform, surpassing Frozen, The Lion King, and K-Pop Demon Hunters: Sing-Along Event. The first Wicked also opened the weekend before Thanksgiving a year ago and posted the best opening ever for a feature take of a Broadway musical ($112.5M) in addition to becoming the highest-grossing big-screen version of the Great White Way showstopper at $473.2M domestic and $756.4M worldwide.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2018Wicked: For Good\u2019 hits cinemas on November 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wicked: For Good will feature new original songs for Ariana Grande\u2019s Glinda and Cynthia Erivo\u2019s Elphaba, which will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[122899,88,122984,206,8110,122985],"class_list":{"0":"post-217234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-contenders-london","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jon-m-chu","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-wicked","13":"tag-wicked-part-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}