Ozians, it’s almost time to follow the yellow brick road again. Wicked: For Good—the second film adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical, once aga
Ozians, it’s almost time to follow the yellow brick road again. Wicked: For Good—the second film adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical, once again starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande—soars into theaters on November 21, 2025. And Vanity Fair has your exclusive first look at all things Elphaba and Glinda ahead of the trailer’s release.
“I can’t believe we’re here. That’s crazy to me,” says Jon M. Chu, logging onto Zoom as “Chutanium 2.0.” The Wicked director can hardly contain his excitement. “What’s nice about movie two is it’s so different from movie one that it doesn’t feel like we’re talking about what you just saw. It’s the new chapter.”
Chu knows he’s got some large ruby slippers to fill. Inspired by the musical of the same name, which was based in turn on the novel by Gregory Maguire, the first Wicked film was both a critical darling and a commercial behemoth. It quickly became the highest-grossing movie musical of all time, scoring 10 Oscar nominations including nods for both Grande and Erivo. It ultimately took home Oscars for costume and production design, as well as a Golden Globe for cinematic and box office achievement.
“I think we always had the bar very high for us,” Chu says. “Thank God, because the alternative universe was not a fun one to be living in. I’m glad I’m in this multi-verse.”
While Wicked tackled act one of the Broadway musical, Wicked: For Good takes on the second act, which covers a time years after Elphaba and Glinda decide to part ways. Elphaba, now an enemy of the state of Oz, has taken to the western skies and the woods, while Glinda has become a public figure controlled by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).
“Our heart was broken when Glinda can’t make the choice that we want her to so badly at the end of movie one, and it feels empowering for Elphaba to fly away from society,” Chu says. “In movie two, we get to see the consequences of those choices. The temperature is up.”
Although For Good finds the witches in a very different stage of life, Chu shot both part one and part two simultaneously in London. “A lot of movie two was shot before some of the stuff in movie one,” Chu says. This forced Erivo and Grande to do some earnest work plotting out the time jumps. “We had big boards with what timeline we’d be in, and they had notes all over their script so we could all be in sync of where we’re at,” he says. Rather than get whiplash, the stars handled the time shifts like the pros they are. Chu likens the process of editing For Good to delving into a time capsule, and hints that some aspects of the sequel will shed lithe on choices made in part one.
“Things that you may have noticed in movie one, you’ll see why those things are there,” he says. “It is designed to be seen big and felt deeply.”
Finding actors who could handle all of Wicked’s sprawling story was paramount for Chu. “Casting-wise, we had to have people who could handle both sides of Galinda, both sides of Elphaba,” he says. “You can do the fun Shiz version of these characters, but can you go to the next level? Can you land the plane? This plane is big, and the world is big.”
In other words, Toto, we’re not at Shiz anymore. Or as Chu puts it: “Kids gonna grow up.”
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