Wicked movie director Jon M Chu on ripping up the musical theatre rule book

Jon M Chu has done it. He has made a “Marvel movie musical.” And it’s the one he has been waiting his whole life to do.

The director “fell in love” with Wicked during its pre-Broadway run in San Francisco and was left thinking: “When are they going to make it? This movie needs to be made!”

“To get the opportunity to tell it, I feel so blessed.” He says.

With a decade and a half of movies under his belt, including Crazy Rich Asians (which is also Broadway-bound) and In the Heights, he made the decision to split Wicked into two movies.

As a self-confessed “theatre kid”, Chu grew up performing in shows: “I love musicals and the power to express not just a song or a story, but to express the human journey through performance. I knew the opportunity that we had here.”

But being a fan didn’t add any pressure, as he explains: “It was more about myself and trying to do the thing that I know musicals can do and fulfilling that with the tools and the language of cinema.

“I felt very confident that we could blend those two together and make a musical that maybe the world had not seen at this epic scale. A Marvel movie musical, could that actually exist? But with these characters, with these actors, I knew that they could do it.”

Chu assembled an all-star cast led by Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda), with Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum – crediting the wait for Wicked to be green-lit working in his favour.

“This cast, at this time, in this moment. The urgency, and the place they’re all at in their careers and life, it was the perfect match on camera to empathise with an audience that maybe feels the same way. Like everyone’s in transition and changing and maybe needs a little confidence or guidance to what we’re about to go through.”

Sitting in the dark, mobile phones off, having paid money upfront to hear a story be told – in that respect, cinema is much like the theatre. But Chu didn’t set out to convert people into being theatregoers: “I don’t think we’re begging people to change their minds about anything. I think we’re presenting the power of what this medium delivers.”

He explains that in cinema, “you can sweep people away into a land,” more so than in any other medium, and for Chu, it’s the music that does that. “We already have score underneath everything. So, what is it when the character’s dialogue becomes a part of the score? You only can do that if you have actors like Ariana and Cynthia where it’s so naturally a part of them that they’re not forcing themselves to sing. It is just a part of how they express dialogue into lyrics, and it goes so smoothly.”

Under Chu’s direction, Stephen Schwartz’s songs have expanded into long sequences: an MTV-ready “What Is This Feeling?”, a swelling of self-indulgence in Fiyero’s “Dancing Through Life”, and the closing number “Defying Gravity” reaching new heights.

“There was no apology,” he says. “It was just like, this is what we’re doing. And everyone, when you feel it, you’ll already be there whether you like it or not.”

Chu speaks excitedly about his theatre collaborations: his time with Schwartz, working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights, and now working with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul on an animated adaptation of Dr Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!. He even recently provided an update on his journey to bringing Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to the silver screen.

“I’m living every theatre kid’s dream!” he declares, without recognising that he is up there as a theatre great himself. “It’s so fun. I can ask about all their other projects and things. We’ll see what’s next. I’m sure it’ll come to me.”

For now, it’s focus on Wicked: Part Two (“We are in it and it’s beautiful. And I’m so excited to share that.”) and carrying on doing the good work of musical adaptations. “I have a job to do and I think I’ve trained myself over the years to really stay focused on getting better. And there’s a lot more to do in the musical genre. There’s a lot more rules to break, and I’m still figuring those things out”, he says.

He does have an additional hope for Wicked: “Hopefully it encourages studios to spend money on big musical adventures. I’m excited about that… There’s nothing in my mind that this is like we did the thing, like we did this thing and there’s a lot more to do… There’s some kid who’s out there who is going to be presenting that and we’re all going to break rules together.”

And at the end of our interview, that theatre kid left this theatre kid with one line: “If the dream that you dare to dream really do come true? Come on! It does.”