Wicked (movie version)

[jimimac71]

I watched the trailer during the Super Bowl then again online just now.
Well, gotta wait until the end of November to see it.
I am curious about Wonka but not willing to paid the new release rental fee.
The original movie for me was only so-so.
Then again, my feelings about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang are the same.
I give a more positive opinion for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.
Probably haven't been to a big screen film (intentionally) in close to 30 years.

[txfilmfan]

Not sure how well known it is, but they split the stage musical into two films. They padded the story and added some new songs. Part I comes out this Thanksgiving. Part II comes out Thanksgiving 2025. I don't know the motivation behind creating two movies from one musical (never has been done before, that I know of), but I'm sure the almighty dollar has something to do with it.

Wicked (the stage musical) has a huge built-in audience all ready for the film's release, like Mamma Mia! did. One difference with Wicked is that it shares characteristics of various Disney properties, in that it spawns a new set of fans as they come onto the scene. All that to say that, if Part I is successful, the producers can count on two admissions from fans (Part I & Part II), as opposed to one, since all they've done is chop a long-ish movie into two parts. As I understand it, their original plans were to have a single film.

[HoldenIsHere]

Not sure how well known it is, but they split the stage musical into two films. They padded the story and added some new songs. Part I comes out this Thanksgiving. Part II comes out Thanksgiving 2025. I don't know the motivation behind creating two movies from one musical (never has been done before, that I know of), but I'm sure the almighty dollar has something to do with it.

Wicked (the stage musical) has a huge built-in audience all ready for the film's release, like Mamma Mia! did. One difference with Wicked is that it shares characteristics of various Disney properties, in that it spawns a new set of fans as they come onto the scene. All that to say that, if Part I is successful, the producers can count on two admissions from fans (Part I & Part II), as opposed to one, since all they've done is chop a long-ish movie into two parts. As I understand it, their original plans were to have a single film.

Yes, the original plan was to have a single WICKED movie, but it was later announce that the stage musical would be split into two movies with the first movie ending with the show's most famous song "Defying Gravity."

Director John M. Chu gave the following explanation:
As we prepared the production over the last year, it became impossible to wrestle the story of 'Wicked' into a single film without doing some real damage to it ... As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one 'Wicked' movie but two! With more space, we can tell the story of 'Wicked' as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.

But I thin think the real reason was the potential for more $$$.

MY FAIR LADY was adapted into one movie without cutting a single song or a single sequence from the stage show.

[HoldenIsHere]

MY FAIR LADY was adapted into one movie without cutting a single song or a single sequence from the stage show.

Not being snarky here: do you seriously think audiences today would tolerate (let alone enthusiastically embrace) a 3-hour film musical? Once you factor in the previews, it's 3-1/2 hour at the movies - and today's youngsters have a TikTok attention span.

The running time for the stage musical WICKED is only 2 -1/2 hours not counting intermission. A movie adaptation would certainly be tighter.

But whether a general audience would embrace a musical at all is the bigger question.

I know people who were excited to see WONKA until they found out it was a musical.

[txfilmfan]

There's a whole generation of folks (mostly female, to be honest) that know the musical inside and out. They will probably come out in droves to see it, as the fandom is essentially what drives its longevity. Globally, 55 million people have seen a version of the stage play. It has a built-in audience. It's not like the Harry Potter or Star Wars fandom, but those Wicked fans would sit through a 3 hour movie.

From what I've seen in the trailer, they've included elements from the original Baum books that aren't in the play. For example, there's a quick shot of Dorothy (without ruby slippers, as that's MGM's invention and IP) and friends visiting Oz. The stage play is really about the backstory of the two Oz witches from the book/MGM movie, so the introduction of elements that would take place later in the timeline is puzzling, to me anyway. Seems they had to lift more material from the Baum universe to pad the story to get 2 full films out of it.

What's strange is that most stage musicals' acts, Wicked included, don't divide the work into two equal parts. Typically, the first act is longer, maybe 1.5 hours, and second acts typically run 45 minutes to an hour or so. Wicked's first act is 1.5 hours and the second runs 1 hour. Consequently, a lot of musicals have more songs and stronger songs in the first act, and the second act will have one or two standout songs (the stereotypical "11 o'clock number" usually being the highlight) with a lot of reprises. So if they end the first film with the stage play's final Act I number ("Defying Gravity"), you might assume more of the new stuff would be in the second film. One of the producers had this quote, from Time, after the trailer's release:

“We didn’t want to end up making one four-hour movie and then cutting out songs. We want to satisfy the fans of the musical.”

I'm not sure how a 2.5 hour stage musical becomes a 4 hour film while simultaneously cutting songs. Whatever they've done, it will be interesting to see how it works out.

[Marysara1]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/w ... f65f3&ei=8 It talks about the color of the slippers. I also read people are not happy about the color grade compared to The Great Oz. I guess that's what post production is for.

[HoldenIsHere]

In the teaser trailer, we see SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE's Bowen Yang as Pfanee, a college friend of Galinda (later Glinda).

I would have liked to have had the movie include the characters of Crope and Tibbett that were in Gregory Maguire's source novel WICKED: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST but were not in the stage musical adaptation. Bowen Yang would have been good as either character.
Winnie Holzman chose to focus her adaptation on female friendship and romance than the larger scope of Maguire's novel.
But Holzman clearly wrote a much-beloved play that has garnered a large fan base.

[TikiSoo]

Bowen Yang as Pfanee, a college friend of Galinda (later Glinda).
Bowen Yang would have been good as either character.

Bowen Yang is great in anything he does...what an exquisite talent! My beef with this picture is co-ed college-certainly not something common when the original Baum story books were written.
One of the great things about movies is making history come "alive" and an origin story about the development of witches doesn't really fit a contemporary setting.

Winnie Holzman chose to focus her adaptation on female friendship and romance than the larger scope of Maguire's novel.

That quashes any interest right there.
Personally, I'm never interested in "back stories": I don't need to know what made Tommy Udo such an evil maniac in KISS OF DEATH to be shocked by his behaviour. People make bad decisions all the time.

[HoldenIsHere]

Bowen Yang as Pfanee, a college friend of Galinda (later Glinda).
Bowen Yang would have been good as either character.

Bowen Yang is great in anything he does...what an exquisite talent! My beef with this picture is co-ed college-certainly not something common when the original Baum story books were written.
One of the great things about movies is making history come "alive" and an origin story about the development of witches doesn't really fit a contemporary setting.

Winnie Holzman chose to focus her adaptation on female friendship and romance than the larger scope of Maguire's novel.

That quashes any interest right there.
Personally, I'm never interested in "back stories": I don't need to know what made Tommy Udo such an evil maniac in KISS OF DEATH to be shocked by his behaviour. People make bad decisions all the time.

I will say that Gregory Maguire's source novel WICKED: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST is one of the most satisfying works of fictions I have ever read. This is coming from someone who has struggled with completing novels. (I tend to gravitate more to non-fiction.)

Maguire's story is set in Oz rather than the US so the existence of co-ed universities makes sense as do the talking animals (like the Lion in Baum's original novel). One of the professors at Shiv University (the school attended by Galinda and Elphaba -- the name the Maguire gave to the woman who became known as the Witch of the West) was a talking goat named Dr. Diilamond.