Alice Brooks has an unusual way of talking about the difference between ‘Wicked” and its sequel “Wicked: For Good.,” which is opening nationwide today. The making of the two Wicked movies was such a vast and intimidating process – shooting in 17 sound stages over I55 days – that, to get started, Brooks, the cinematographer for both movie, assigned a single word for each scene to express its “emotional intention.”
“For the first movie, those words were yearning and longing and power and friendship and choice. And for the second movie, they were sacrifice and surrender and separation and consequence.
“As our conversations deepened, it became clear that the first movie would glow in an effervescent daylight, and the second movie would be steeped in a maturity and density and have a weight to it.”
Brooks was speaking at a panel discussion earlier this week after a screening of the film, moderated by director Jon M. Chu, featuring eight essential members of the creative team. Among their topics: the role of visual effects in storytelling, the choice to make Elphaba’s castle blue, the importance of sound design in enhancing the emotional impact of scenes, the need to find actors with experience on stage, among
“The movie is literally built by all these people and all their crews and all those crews’ crews,” Chu said. Below, excerpts from the discussion, in five short videos. Plus I asked long-time Broadway costume designer Paul Tazewell how theater guided him in his work on the Wicked films..
Of related interest:
My Wicked Broadway Review from September 2025
Wicked Movie vs Stage Musical from November, 2024
(Note: Unlike the first movie, “Wicked: For Good” does feature two new songs. Elphaba sings “No Place Like Home,” Glinda:,”The Girl in the Bubble,”)
Paul Tazewell elaborated, from his perspective as the costume designer.
Tazewell is also a two-time Tony winning costume designer who has been working on Broadway for three decades, and in Hollywood for far less time — although enough to win an Academy Award for the first Wicked movie. I asked whether his background in theater influenced his work on the Wicked movies.
“All the way through,” he replied:
