{"id":700000,"date":"2025-11-19T17:30:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T14:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/brush-up-on-everything-happening-in-oz-before-wicked-for-good-this-weekend\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T17:30:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T14:30:26","slug":"brush-up-on-everything-happening-in-oz-before-wicked-for-good-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/brush-up-on-everything-happening-in-oz-before-wicked-for-good-this-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Brush Up On Everything Happening in Oz Before \u2018Wicked: For Good\u2019 This Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\t[This story contains major spoilers from\u00a0Wicked<\/em> the movie and musical.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWicked<\/em> fans are ready to return to the wonderful land of Oz.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second film in Jon M. Chu\u2019s two-part on-screen adaptation of the beloved Broadway hits theaters this Friday, almost exactly one year after Wicked<\/em> was released. Wicked:<\/em> For Good<\/em> will see the witches of Oz \u2014 Ariana Grande\u2018s Galinda, aka Glinda the Good Witch, and Cynthia Erivo\u2018s Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West \u2014 continuing the story that began with the first film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first glimpse of Wicked: For Good <\/em>came <\/em>in the form of a CinemaCon 2025 poster. In the image, Erivo\u2019s Elphaba looked right at home in her full \u201cwicked witch\u201d glory, while Grande\u2019s Glinda resembled the Glinda the Good fans of\u00a0The Wizard of Oz\u00a0<\/em>are used to. The poster\u2019s tagline, \u201cYou will be changed,\u201d is a reference to the iconic duet from the Broadway musical and inspiration for the film\u2019s title, \u201cFor Good.\u201d The song is one of\u00a0Wicked<\/em>\u2018s most recognizable after \u201cDefying Gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWicked<\/em>, which arrived in theaters Nov. 22, 2024, had the highest opening for a musical adaptation with an estimated $114 million at the domestic box office. (Grande and Erivo, despite an unverified online rumor, were paid equal for their show-stopping starring roles; they even compared contracts.) The sequel film is tracking to open with $115 million-plus Thanksgiving week, according to prerelease tracking.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe films are based on the 2003 musical of the same name, which was originally based on the best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire. Wicked<\/em>\u00a0tells the untold story of the\u00a0witches of Oz. Winnie Holzman, the stage production\u2019s book writer, wrote the screenplay for Chu\u2019s movies<\/a> with Dana Fox. Academy Award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz adapted the musical for the screen. Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth originated the roles of Elphaba and Glinda on Broadway (and they app<\/a>eared in surprise cameos during the \u201cOne Short Day\u201d sequence in the first film).<\/p>\n

\n\tWicked<\/em> ended with Erivo\u2019s awe-inspiring performance of the stage show\u2019s most well-known musical number, \u201cDefying Gravity.\u201d Since \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d served as the end of the Broadway show\u2019s first act, this Wicked<\/em> ending helped to usher in Chu\u2019s vision to break Act 1 and Act 2 into separate films.<\/p>\n

\n\tChu\u2019s Wicked<\/em> stayed true to the stage musical, featuring little to no changes to the story\u2019s overall plot. He told The Hollywood Reporter <\/em>ahead of the film\u2019s release of the moviemaking process, \u201cWe knew we didn\u2019t want to pull the movie away from the show so far that it wasn\u2019t the show that I loved. We started talking about, what numbers can you cut to get it in? And the amount of numbers you have to cut to get this story in is just not plausible. You want all the songs, so you\u2019re going to cut dancing. Which ones? Tell me which ones and we\u2019ll do it. It just became very apparent that we had to make a choice. We went back and forth, are we making a three-and-a-half-hour movie that cuts off all these things? Are we doing one at a time? And if we\u2019re doing one at a time, then we have to make sure that that movie is emotionally fulfilling so it doesn\u2019t feel like we\u2019re stopping in the middle of a story. \u2026 We all agreed that we were splitting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cAnd we found that that room was necessary. Because if you\u2019re going to, I don\u2019t know, perhaps end on a \u2018Defying Gravity,\u2019 let\u2019s say, then you have Elphaba that needs to be the most pivotal moment of her life. So then you need to set up Elphaba more than maybe the show does. You need to see what her childhood was like. \u2026 And how do you build that friendship? In the medium of movie, you call bullshit on things so fast, you have to have the time and the space to believe in that relationship. And you have a narrator of Galinda that wraps it all together, that sets up things for movie two. So all those things are just a lot, and I think we found a beautiful balance in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChu and the team shot both movies together \u201cover 160 days and got stopped 10 days before finishing [because of the strike] our \u2018Defying Gravity\u2019 and flying days,\u201d he told THR<\/em>. The team finished up the 10 days of production at the beginning of 2024. As the movies were shot together, the cast remains the same for both films.<\/p>\n

\n\tWicked<\/em>\u2018s second act takes a darker turn from the bright poppy moments in the first act. \u201cDefying Gravity,\u201d in both the stage musical and film, serves as the moment that Elphaba \u201ctransforms\u201d into the Wicked Witch of the West that Wizard of Oz<\/em> fans know, with the added context that the Wizard and her mentor, Madame Morrible, played in the film by Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh, respectively, have branded her \u201cwicked\u201d after she refused to help their plot to strip<\/a> rights away from the animals in Oz. Elphaba and Glinda, who spent the first act and film becoming friends against all odds, go their separate ways as Elphaba chooses to rebel against the Wizard and Glinda stays behind.<\/p>\n

\n\tSchwartz previously confirmed to THR<\/em> that there are two new songs in Wicked: For Good<\/em>. Erivo will sing \u201cNo Place Like Home,\u201d while Grande will tackle a new track, \u201cThe Girl in the Bubble.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey were written because they were necessary for the storytelling. It\u2019s why there isn\u2019t a new song in the first movie because we didn\u2019t need one,\u201d Schwartz previously said to THR<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019re an important part of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe reason we even wanted to have new songs in the second part, and that\u2019s the only thing I\u2019m going to say about the second part, is because we had these ideas of songs that we kind of fell in love with, and as Dana\u2019s saying, we couldn\u2019t even have fit the whole score into one movie,\u201d Holzman said, adding that any changes made to part one were made to \u201cincrease the intensity or increase the stakes\u201d and never just because.<\/p>\n

\n\tHolzman and Fox also weighed in on the Wicked<\/em> spoiler debate, explaining why they aren\u2019t concerned about fans potentially spoiling the second film. \u201cIt didn\u2019t open yesterday, it\u2019s been running for 21 years,\u201d Holzman joked about the stage musical. \u201cNot just in America, all over the place. It\u2019s been touring and it\u2019s been in a lot of languages. There are some answers in that you can know \u2026 If you go\u00a0find that out yourself, you can know those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, she said she feels for the fans who are trying to avoid the spoilers: \u201cI have to pay homage to people who are having their responses because that is what we wanted. Passion is beautiful. It shows how they gave their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n