Director Jon M. Chu provides an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of "Wicked's" spectacular sets and the making of the fi | dG1fTzF2clU1N0J1QVU
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00:00Well I come into this film as a fan. I think back at the moment that I first saw Wicked
00:10when it was being workshopped in San Francisco 20 years ago. I had a very personal family
00:17connection to it watching it with my mother. And I was so blown away to know the back story
00:23of the Wicked Witch and it was so, it felt so relevant even back then. You can do anything.
00:29Deep down in it was a story about change, was a story about new perspectives, was a
00:37story about pursuing your dreams. I can't believe it. About the decades in between,
00:47all the movies I made in between, every single movie, a lesson that I needed to learn that
00:51built one upon the other. You're the one the wizard has been waiting for. To then get the
00:57opportunity to say, hey, would you be the one to bring it to the screen? It's overwhelming.
01:01I understand the trust that is being put upon me. I feel the same pressure for myself. I don't want
01:07to ruin Wicked. Once you learn to harness your emotions, the sky's the limit. There was an
01:16opportunity to expand Wicked from the stage. So we could expand that world, expand the emotions
01:22of it. By having Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande play these characters, you get a different kind
01:27of nuance. And with the camera, we get to be right there with them. In a movie, you can be
01:32two inches from their face. Oh yeah, you can be 10,000 feet above that moment. That's exciting.
01:41I did not understand emotionally how it would feel until you have the yellow brick road in front of
01:46you. And you're like, oh shit, we're making Oz. That was like a surreal moment. These images,
01:57they're so iconic. We had to do it justice. And we had to add new pages to the story. I think all
02:05the crew felt that as well. I couldn't have done it without being woken up every day by the
02:12imagination and the work and the craftsmanship of everybody who showed up every day. When one
02:17person's down, another person is pushing it even more forward. Anything could change at any moment
02:23depending on how it felt right at that moment. I think that's where the magic comes from in movies
02:28sometimes, where you couldn't have thought about this in your bed. You couldn't have written this
02:31down in a script. It just is happening. And Wicked allows me to open that magic box.
02:42And now when I think back how it all started, it's pretty incredible. It's actually unbelievable,
02:53the journey. I'm proud that everyone cared about these characters. And I think we all had moments
03:01of self-reflection of our journey as storytellers. We all would look at ourselves and be like, wow,
03:09I was very lucky to be able to capture that on camera. This is what you and your friends and
03:13family and your future generations are going to see on the big screen forever. I want people to
03:19see Wicked more than they ever could on the stage. And I want people who saw it on the stage to
03:24experience it in a way they've never experienced it before. I want them to feel what I felt going
03:31into that theater for the first time. This was destiny in my mind. This was the movie I was
03:38always meant to make.