Jon M. Chu believes ‘the time is right’ for ‘Wicked’

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — “Wicked” is all the rage these days, the director of the movie adaptation sounds like he couldn’t be more pleased with the timing of it all.

Jon M. Chu spoke with CNN’s John Berman Tuesday about his hit movie musical, which stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

“There has to be a reason why a movie is made, an urgency, and I think the time is right,” Chu said of the film, which follows the 2003 debut of the Broadway musical.

“You have to find the right Elphaba and Glinda, and it just so happens that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were coming into this moment of their careers where they get to show of another side to them that maybe people haven’t seen and, of course, I had to go through a bunch of movies and learn my lessons before being here to do it,” he added. “I don’t know all the things, but I think it’s the right moment.”

Erivo plays Elphaba, a green witch who suffers discrimination and rejection for being different. One of the character’s most famous moments in both the film and the Broadway musical is when the character sings the song “Defying Gravity.”

The lyrics reflect a person who decides to take control of their life, as she sings that she is “through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game.”

“I think the moments have changed, even after covid, those words ‘something has changed within me, somethings not the same’ in ‘Defying Gravity’ meant something different,” Chu told CNN. “To me there’s this whole uncertainty at what the future holds and ‘Wicked’ plays right into that, about what it is to step up to tell the story, when you reveal the truth and find out all these things, what do you become and what kind of story are you going to tell?”

With the movie currently performing magic at the box office, there is building anticipation for part two, scheduled to be released in November 2025.

Chu teased that the sequel will have some new songs and questions.

“If movie one is about choices, movie two is about consequences and why do you defend a home that maybe doesn’t want you and what is the meaning of home,” he said. “I think those things are really interesting questions.”

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