As we roll through the holiday season, it has become clear that there are two powerhouses duking it out for audience attention at the box office… and it seems to be good news for fans of musicals. On the animated side, Moana 2 continues to prove that Disney made the right move by releasing the sequel to theaters, rather than making it available to people with a Disney+ subscription. Meanwhile, Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway smash Wicked is piling up support, pushing its status as an awards contender even higher, especially as we learn more about the details of filming this intricate, expansive blockbuster.
Prior to the release of the movie, Wicked co-star Bowen Yang shared during an interview how he had “a mental breakdown” after spending so much time shuttling back and forth between London and New York City to juggle the shooting schedules of both the musical and Saturday Night Live. For Yang, it was imperative that he be at both, and he pushed himself past his limit to make sure he didn’t let either production down.
When Jon M. Chu appeared on CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast to discuss the filming of Wicked, we mentioned Yang’s schedule juggle, and learned that he wasn’t alone. Chu told us:
This is the power of Marc Platt, our producer, who loves to get into that stuff. That stuff, I'm like, ‘I can't even deal with (it).’ But yeah, dealing with the SNL production, and our production. We had, for Madame Morrible, we had Michelle (Yeoh) for a certain amount of weeks. We had Jeff Goldblum for a certain amount of weeks. (We had MIchelle) during her Oscar run. That was insane. So she's back and forth, she's getting beat up. But every time she came, she was a super pro, and she loved doing the work. So we have these schedules that are built in, and then we have… everyone's schedules are moving around. Johnny (Bailey)’s doing Bridgerton and Fellow Travelers. Any movement is a huge shift in our schedule. So that was very scary.
We don’t think about the sheer number of factors that can derail a massive motion picture production, and the schedule of the cast hovers near the top. Especially for a production like Wicked, where the ensemble cast is packed with musical superstars, pedigreed performers who are in demand on other productions, and literal wizards behind the scenes who are doing the impossible to make the movie work. When talking about Bowen Yang’s flexibility working on both Wicked and SNL, Jon M. Chu compared it to stories that he heard about Michael J. Fox balancing Back to the Future with his work on the sitcom Family Ties, or Chris Farley and David Spade having to keep doing SNL while they shot Tommy Boy up in Toronto.
Be sure to listen to our complete conversation with Wicked director Jon M. Chu, available on ReelBlend:
And go see Wicked: Part One in theaters, if you haven’t yet had the chance. It’s a magnificent example of an old-school musical, the kind that just might win a Best Picture Oscar, if it plays its cards right.
