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Director Jon M. Chu joins us for our podcast The Love of Cinema to to discuss his love of musicals, casting Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and what he hopes audiences take away from Wicked.

Read on, watch or listen below. 

Wicked is in cinemas from 22 November — Book Now!

Wicked had its London premiere last night, which in some ways must feel like a bit of a homecoming for you, having made so much of the film here. How is it to be back?

It's great. What do they say? There's no place like home. It was great to be with a cast and crew who built this thing, all the hundreds and thousands of hands that built Emerald City and Munchkinland. It's my first premiere, actually, I had to skip all the other ones because I just had a baby. It felt really nice to be here, to share our little secret that we've been making for three years now.

Congratulations on both counts! Wicked, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, is one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time and has been running for 18 years on the West End. In case there's one person out there who's not familiar with Wicked, could you give us a bit of a summary of the premise and what the story is about?

Yeah. It's the secret, untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West. If you know the Wizard of Oz, the villain in there is the Wicked Witch of the West, and this asks, was she actually wicked? And are you born wicked or is wickedness thrust upon you? So we explore that in her friendship with Glinda the Good. They were actually friends at Shiz University …what happens in that relationship that makes it all fall apart?

I saw Wicked for the first time when I was ten, here in London, and it sparked a lifelong love of musical theatre. I'm sure that's the case for so many people. What's your relationship with the musical?

Yeah. I've been waiting for this movie for 20 years, waiting for someone to make it. I saw Wicked before it ever reached Broadway actually, when it was being workshopped in San Francisco. I was a film student at the time. I grew up in the Bay Area, so my mom invited me to see the new Stephen Schwartz musical based around the Wizard of Oz. I remember being blown away when I was there.

I remember thinking, wow, this is such a new way to see that story that we all know, that the Yellow Brick Road may not be as perfect as we think and the Wizard behind the curtain may not be giving us our heart's desire. I love that sort of subversive look at this story.

Let's talk about you and your filmography. It feels to me like every step of your career so far has been a kind of building block to make this project what it is.

I feel very lucky to have basically grown up in front of the public eye through my movies. It's been a good almost 20 years of work. I love that I just got to start in the Step Up world, and meet all these dancers and learn how to shoot dance and movement, then going into Justin Bieber's world and traveling with him. It built all the way through the action movies, G.I. Joe with The Rock and Bruce Willis.

But I remember when I did Crazy Rich Asians, everything changed for me in terms of what I wanted to put out into the world. I felt like I didn't have to prove myself to anyone anymore. I had learned how to move the levers of Hollywood. And then the bigger question was, OK, Jon, what do you want to say?

I started having kids around Crazy Rich Asians, and just had my fifth recently. So to me, it's about setting the story for the next generation. There was a story that was set for me, and it was really helpful in my younger years. But as I grew older, I realized it wasn't as perfect as I thought it was. Who's the storyteller? Who's telling us what a villain should look like? What beauty is? What a hero should look like? It feels very urgent to tell these kinds of stories.

Is there some fear and some scepticism in taking on a project this size, or were you just raring to go?

It was kind of both, you know. But I love the fear. I love the doubts. To me, that revs me up, it drives me a little bit.

Very few filmmakers have been allowed to paint this kind of cinematic illustration. What does Oz look like and feel like? We actually built the things we planted 9 million tulips, we built the giant 60 ton train to really immerse the audience.

I got the call during the pandemic. I think it was actually a huge motivation, because people had been sort of thirsty to go back to the movie theater again. We wanted to show, at the grandest scale, movies can go shoot the moon, and be earnest, and expressive, and be all the things that you want in a musical. That was really fun.

Talk to me about the process of adaptation, taking this live few hours of theatre in a dark room and making it a huge cinematic spectacle.

Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Part of that was me sitting down with Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holtzman, the geniuses who created this, and [producer] Marc Platt. We went through every line of every script that was ever written about Wicked, and they told me why each line was there, why each lyric was written, what things have been cut out, what they loved, what they never really loved, and that was a great experience. I got to be a sponge and absorb that.

I paired that with my own patient zero experience of watching Wicked for the first time and being blown away. To me, those two allowed me to see the cracks I needed to fill, or the areas I wanted the movie to blossom more.

Then it was about the design, bringing in Nathan Crowley, who's an amazing production designer, Paul Tazewell, who does the costumes, and Alice Brooks, who's the cinematographer, and of course my choreographer, Christopher Scott. We built so many models, miniatures of every set, and you could almost walk through the feeling of Oz throughout. It just took a lot of work, step by step, by a lot of people.

It's magical though, when you bring it back to that feeling of first watching it as a child.

Absolutely. That's, I think, the power of movies, is it brings you back to your childhood, your childlike brain. That it can spur, provoke imagination and wonder.

You've got so much to play with, and an incredible cast to do it with. I mean, Cynthia Erivo, already a legend, a powerhouse. On the other hand, when we meet Elphaba, she's quite vulnerable. She's not there yet. So I'm curious about when you realize or are confident that Cynthia is your Elphaba.

I had the same impression of her as you did. But when she came in jeans and a t-shirt, she sang The Wizard and I, and she looked like a little kid. I had never seen her in that way.

And she was singing about this yearning, this open wound. It reminded me of when I was in my dorm room dreaming about being a filmmaker. And I knew if it connected with me, it would connect to so many people.

Words that I had heard so many times, the way she sang them, it felt like I was hearing it for the first time.

And of course we have Ariana Grande as Glinda. This is the culmination of a sort of lifelong dream for her, and a massively competitive role as well. How did she win the part?

She had to earn it. There was no offer or anything like that. She had to come in and audition.

And I was very sceptical at first. I was like, there's no way she's prepared for this. This is a huge movie. It takes a lot of experience to lead a movie. Of course she can sing, but can she get to the vulnerable part of Glinda? Is she funny enough?

The moment she auditioned, she was the most interesting person in that room. But I didn't believe it. So I brought her in again. She was the most interesting person there. I did not believe it. She did it a third time. And every time, she proved herself over and over and over again, to a place where she was living Glinda.

I mean, when she showed up on set, she was Glinda. I didn't have to direct her. It felt like I was meeting this character in real life for the first time, and that the show was based off of this real person. It felt very natural.

And what an exciting thing. One of those popular girls in the world, that you were going to see in a new light for the first time.

These are real, real vocalists too. I think there was a lot of singing live on set.

Yeah, there's a ton of singing live on set. That was the great part of having these actors is that the vocal part was the easy part, actually, like I never had to give a note, I never had to worry about that.

They're recording pre-record in the studio, and using those recordings in rehearsals. But as we're creating the character and movement, then things change in the music. it was a constant flow of all these departments working together and building this from the ground up.

By the time we're on set, we have a live pianist. They have an earwig that they can hear the music - we don't hear any of the music, we can just hear their voices. And talk about how many people were in tears! Grips were in tears. Camera people like shaking while holding the camera. It was very emotional, getting to hear the purity of their voices.

We've had a little bit of shyness, I think, about marketing a movie musical as a musical recently. Do you feel like we're due a resurgence for musicals onscreen?

Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I grew up on musicals, on the stage and in movies. For me, it's just a part of storytelling in general. The music and the dance all work together, and actually, it's just as intimate as the dialogue.

I hope Wicked shows that, with the power of music, you can go really big and have no fear of the earnestness of what you're doing. I think that's where people are at. I think people need to be able to express what they're feeling, and music and dance help connect the dots for us.

We hope that we can be like Elphaba, and have that courage to sing and surrender ourselves to our own power. But maybe we're all a little bit Glinda. We're not ready for that yet, or hope to have that courage and are trying to have that courage. So I love that a musical movie can really express that.

We're excited to be bringing audiences into our cinemas for Wicked. Any words you want them to take in with them?

Bring your family, bring your friends, come share it with all your loved ones, even people who don't like musicals. We built it for everyone: people who know Wizard of Oz, don't know Wizard of Oz, no Wicked, don't know Wicked, love musicals and don't.

Just let go and be swept away into a far off land. I think that's what movies are all about.

 Lucy Fenwick Elliott

Hosted by Picturehouse's very own Sam Clements, The Love Of Cinema podcast goes deep on the best new releases, with a little help from some of our favourite film critics, plenty of special guests, and you, the audience!