Wicked: For Good director Jon M Chu has revealed that he refused to show studio bosses the film’s powerful final shot.
Chu said he made the decision because he was worried that executives at Universal Pictures would use the image in the film’s marketing campaign.
The scene in question is of Ariana Grande’s good witch Glinda whispering into the ear of Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo.
It is a recreation of the iconic poster for the original Wicked Broadway musical, which premiered in 2003.
Speaking to Business Insider, Chu – who also directed last year’s first instalment – said “it was always the plan” to end on that image.
“I was always going to end on the whisper,” he said. “Do you know how hard it was to force Universal to never use it in any marketing material? They even had a poster of it for the first movie, and I was like, ‘Why are we releasing this poster? We should never acknowledge the whisper. Never. Never.’
“I wanted it to feel like we didn’t care about it, then suddenly it’s the last shot in For Good. So the studio never saw that final shot. I imposed a huge thing: ‘Do not show this shot!’ They wanted it so badly.”
The musical poster is among the most recognisable on Broadway, depicting a smirking Glinda in a witch’s hat on a green background with Glinda, wearing white, whispering into her ear.
“That poster is one of the most brilliant posters ever made,” Chu said. “You don’t know what Glinda’s saying, because they never actually do that in the musical. But it’s sort of the key to friendship. That we have these secrets.”
Speaking about actors Grande and Erivo, he said: “The girls got to choose what they are actually saying in the scene. I don’t even know what they said.”
While Chu kept the shot hidden from the studio, Universal did use a recreation of the original poster during the marketing for the first Wicked film in October 2024.
The marketing material paid homage to the original poster, and featured noticeable differences such as Elphaba’s face being clearly in shot, unlike the original in which her hat is so low that her face is hidden.
Many Wicked fans called out the difference and set about “correcting the mistake”, using Photoshop to lower the hat and hide Erivo’s face.
Erivo called the digitally altered images “the wildest, most offensive thing I have seen”.
“The original poster is an ILLUSTRATION. I am a real life human being, who chose to look right down the barrel of the camera to you, the viewer… because, without words we communicate with our eyes,” she wrote on Instagram at the time.
“Our poster is an homage not an imitation, to edit my face and hide my eyes is to erase me. And that is just deeply hurtful.”
In theatres now, For Good sees Erivo reprise her role as Elphaba opposite Grande’s Glinda.
The sequel, which comes a year after Chu’s Oscar-nominated Wicked, adapts the second act of the hit Broadway musical and welcomes a brief appearance from Dorothy, the main protagonist of The Wizard of Oz.
In a two-star review of the film, The Independent’s film critic wrote: “The back half of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s musical, adapted from the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire and itself a retelling of The Wizard of Oz that questions the wickedness of the Witch of the West, was always a bit of a slog.
“And Jon M Chu’s direction, even with all that budget and talent at hand, fails to find a satisfactory fix.”
For Good is in cinemas now.
Ariana Grande says she’s been ‘healing my relationship to music and touring’
Wicked: For Good brings back detail from original story missing from classic movie
Rush Hour 4 in development after Trump reportedly pushed for sequel
Dick Van Dyke names the two things to avoid to live a long life as he nears 100
Marvel star to join Mike Flanagan-directed The Exorcist reboot
Trump pushes studio to make a sequel to his favorite buddy-cop movie
