When others ran from the musical, Jon M. Chu and 'Wicked' embraced it

NEW YORK — ''Musical'' has been a dirty word lately in Hollywood marketing, but ''Wicked'' director Jon M. Chu isn't having it.

Of course, there's no running from the term when you're bringing to the screen one of the most popular Broadway shows of the 21st century, or telling a story so connected to one of the most beloved movie musicals ever, ''The Wizard of Oz.'' But Chu, the 44-year-old filmmaker of 2021's ''In the Heights'' who as a young man was transported by ''Wicked'' on the stage, is a true believer in form.

''When words aren't enough, music is the extension of your expression. That's what movies do, and that's what musicals do,'' says Chu. ''When it's tied into their communication of where characters are at in this moment and time, it's the most beautiful thing.''

''Wicked,'' which Universal Pictures opens Thursday in theaters, is one of the fall's biggest gambles not just because it's been split in two (the second ''Wicked'' film will arrive in fall 2025), but because it's going all-out for a big-screen, song-and-dance spectacular at a time when other films (see ''Wonka'' and ''Mean Girls'') have sought to shroud their musical underpinnings.

''Everyone knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, once in a lifetime to make a movie of this scale, of this moment when cinema is being questioned of what place it has in our life,'' says Chu. ''We had to shoot the moon.''

''Wicked,'' written by Winnie Holzman (who penned the book to the musical) and Dana Fox, stars Cynthia Erivo as the green-skinned Elphaba Thropp, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and Ariana Grande as Galinda, the future Good Witch of the South.

Various forms of a ''Wicked'' movie been in development almost since the Broadway show opened in 2003 — earlier, in fact, because producer Marc Platt initially developed Gregory Maguire's book ''Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West'' as a film before shifting to the stage.

''‘The Wizard of Oz' had such an influence of my own family — an immigrant family that came to America with these dreams,'' says Chu, whose parents were born in Taiwan and China. ''We're going through such a changing period in our culture, and this hit it so on the nose — that change is difficult, that the Yellow Brick Road may not be the path for all of us."

Much of ''Wicked'' will hinge on its two leads (though the supporting cast includes Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible). Chu says he never did a chemistry read with Erivo and Grande together — even though Grande auditioned numerous times.

''Ari, she came in five times for us. Every time, she was the most interesting person in the room,'' Chu says. ''I resisted. I was like, ‘There's no way Ariana Grande, the person we think of, can handle this, carrying a movie, her first movie.' Wait until you see her in this. She will blow your mind and break your hearts.''

Erivo, who was already won a Tony, Grammy and Emmy, and been nominated for an Oscar, was an easier call.

''I knew Cynthia could do ‘Defy Gravity' anytime, anywhere,'' says Chu. ''What I didn't know was how vulnerable she could be. But when she came in and sang ‘The Wizard and I,' she showed her wounds. To me, that's why I fell in love with movies, when you get to see someone so raw.''

''That structure and those journeys made it that much easier to see, oh, there's two different stories,'' says Platt, the veteran producer of ''La La Land,'' ''Into the Woods'' and ''Legally Blonde.'' ''They're the same story and it's about both of them all the time. But, really, one character changes significantly through the first and one changes significantly in the second.''

Measuring up to not just ''Wicked" but ''The Wizard of Oz'' was an added pressure that led to some extremes. Chu, for example, had nine million tulips grown for his sets.

''Very few filmmakers have had the opportunity to paint Oz, and I took that very seriously,'' says Chu. ''We built a lot of sets. A 16-ton Emerald City train. We built Emerald City. We built Munchkin Land. You could walk around. You could go into stores. You could look at the labels in the stores!''

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