Wicked is poised to make theater-loving hearts soar, but there will be a few core differences from the stage to the screen.
This post has spoilers for Wicked.
Wicked, adapted from the Broadway show of the same name which was inspired by Gregory Maguire’s novel, does cut a few core lines from the stage show including “The Wizard will see you now” and “We’ll be late for Wizomania.” Turns out, director Jon M. Chu had a good reason to omit those parts of the dialogue from the final script.
“When you don’t have a live audience to play off, some of the comedy doesn’t quite work,” Chu, 45, told Variety in an interview published on Saturday, November 23. “I remember when [Ariana Grande] read that we didn’t have the line ‘The Wizard will see you now!’ There was a reason for it; they were more progressed in the geography.”
He added, “In rehearsals, we didn’t have it and every time that moment would happen, they would sing it anyway. Ari was like, ‘I promise you, we have to have it.’ So I was like, ‘OK, let me figure it out.’ We built it in so there are two entrances now, but it was worth it. There were debates all the time.”
Wicked hit theaters on Friday, November 22, telling the story of how the iconic witches from The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North, initially met as roommates at Shiz University. Grande, 31, plays good witch Galinda/Glinda, while Cynthia Erivo takes on the mantle of the wicked Elphaba.
Chu also attempted to keep in Galinda/Glinda’s line “It’s good to see me, isn’t it? No need to answer. That’s rhetorical.” However, the joke didn’t hit the same when Grande said it on camera without a live audience.
“The joke didn’t land. Not because of the way she performed it, but because there’s no audience to give the feedback for it,” Chu explained. “We put fake Ozian reactions, but it was too meta, too early. That was a scary one to cut because it’s, like, a Bible line.”
The Wicked that is out now is only part one. A follow-up will hit theaters next year on November 21, 2025.
“I will say, because I’ve [already] cut Part Two, [it] is a doozy. You get the meat,” Chu teased to Variety. “I did not know the context of where we’d be in society right now. It becomes eight times more relevant than before when you’re talking about truth and consequences of making the right or wrong choices. It’s intense.”
Wicked Part One is now in theaters.
