Since its debut in 2003, Wicked has been one of the most enduringly popular stage musicals of the 21st century, and, for almost that long, the question of its adaptation to film was not so much “if,” but “when.” Finally, in the fall of 2024 Wicked: Part I arrived in cinemas where it defied not just gravity, but the conventional wisdom that musicals are something of a cursed genre in feature films. A year later, the conclusion to this story is here in Wicked: For Good, bringing a close to the adventures of Elphaba and Glinda and the not-so-wonderful Wizard of Oz.
To learn more about the massive combined production for the pair of films, Camera Operator spoke with A camera and Steadicam operator Karsten Jacobsen, DFF, and B camera operator Simon Finney, GBCT, ACO. They told not only of the huge scale of the shoot, but also the more intimate moments of spontaneity, reacting to the performances of stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
A year has passed since Elphaba was branded as a traitor and flew off into the western sky, and as the Wizard and Madame Morrible’s influence expands across Oz, its citizens live in fear of the so-called Wicked Witch of the West. Meanwhile Glinda and Fiyero are left to wrestle with the dissonance of knowing the truth about Elphaba while simultaneously having a duty to maintain as public figures. As Elphaba continues to oppose the Wizard’s fraudulent rule, conflicts come to a head when a twister drops a farmhouse from Kansas right in the middle of Munchkinland. Wicked: For Good is directed by Jon Chu from a screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox. It stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum.
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David Daut 