PROFESSOR'S PICKS: Five Lessons Hollywood Ought to Learn from the Success of WICKED

    That which has teased studios since the freak success of La La Land and The Greatest Showman has finally come to pass: Hollywood has finally launched a successful musical. Or rather, they've launched two.

    The musical is sort of like the golden idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's valuable beyond imagination--but only if you know just how to retrieve it. There have been specific periods where the musical has yielded tremendous rewards for Hollywood, but for the greater part of the lifespan of feature-filmmaking, studios have been punished for reaching beyond their means.

    Yet after ages of dormancy, the years leading up to the Wicked movies were lined with musicals, more than we'd seen in the previous decade. A few of them were quite well crafted. Others were ... learning experiences. None really became what we'd call "mainstream."

    But Wicked and Wicked: For Good have both seen rare success. I'm publishing this shortly after Wicked: For Good was selected by both AFI and The Critics Guild as one of the top 10 movies of 2025, and the film emerged as one of the five highest grossing films of the year only three weeks into its run. 

    And it's not hard to see why. The performances? Electric. The design? Immaculate. The story? Timelier every minute. The box office is matching the enthusiasm of an audience that is feeling very seen. Which begs the question of what happens next.

    I have to remind myself that the world has never really needed "reasons" to discount the musical form, and so I shouldn't get my hopes up. But for an industry trying to find its footing in a post-COVID landscape still ravaged by the streaming wars, even the musical may start looking like safe ground. 

    The bigger question is whether or not they'll be able to pull it off gracefully. Studios do not always take the right lessons from their own successes. The last fifteen or so years have seen Hollywood trying hard to replicate the success of the MCU, and that has seen not only more superhero movies than one ecosystem can sustain, but some truly desperate attempts to slap together whatever "cinematic universe" they imagine audiences will go for, and we have also seen the catastrophic consequences that arise in the wake of all that.

   As someone who has been following the possibility of a "Wicked" film adaptation for something like fifteen years now, and studying the larger film landscape all the while, I have put quite a bit of thought into what the success of a successful translation would do, or rather, should do. 

    The full title of this piece ought to be "... For Adapting Musicals" because that is the trend that these movies are most likely to set off. But there are perhaps some transferable principles here as well for other modes of film. 

    So, some things for studios to consider before they try bringing Hadestown to the silver screen ... 

 1. Put Theater Kids in Charge ... 

    The default excuse for why we don't get more musicals is always "something something just not marketable something something nobody wants to watch people sing." But studios are relying on skewed data because the target audience for musicals have never really been fed. They're not in a position to say whether the fish are biting because they've never known where to cast their line. 

   Particularly when it comes to adapting Broadway shows, the people in the chair should be people who know the theater very well and know how to speak to the target audience--people who know firsthand that a large sect of your audience is going to want to see Elphaba's cloak billowing from her like her own personal thundercloud, just like it does on stage, whether or not that "makes sense."

    That was a strength of director Jon M. Chu. He has consistently shown that he knows what musicals have to give. "Using all those tools to get into a character and understand a character much deeper. I feel most people are like 'musicals, whatever,' but this actually allows you to get closer to the drama of it." 

    There can be and have been flukes, last minute converts who become musical masters basically on the job. You also had prominent contributors for these films who came onto this project without familiarity with the stage musical. Neither screenwriter Dana Fox nor composer John Powell had seen the stage show before they signed on, but they both put in the time to figure out what the project needed, and the results speak for themselves. 

     So, yes, you don't want to gatekeep or discourage new students, but Hollywood at large is certainly not overwrought with musical scholars in key decision-making roles. And then Hollywood dares to wonder why they can't crack the musical code ... Hire people who know what your audience wants to see, and watch the magic take care of itself.

2. ... But Also Hire Film People   

    Film and theater are functionally different mediums that offer different tools. You can do different things with a camera than you can do with a stage, and vice-versa. Neither venue is necessarily better than the other, but a storyteller needs to know what material they're working with. 

    A lot of filmmakers struggle to make this theatrical text work within the cinematic framework. Watching Phantom of the Opera onstage has a specific payoff because you are free to imagine that you are in the Paris Opera house experiencing all this in real time with the characters. That specific experience is lost when the story is translated onto your living room television, and the filmmakers didn't really know how to fill in the gap, which is a huge reason why the stage show carries far more authority than its film adaptation. (Less common but just as frustrating is the stage director tasked with working within the unfamiliar conventions of film, and their efforts face many of the same stumbling blocks.)

    This sort of thing does occasionally generate feelings of superiority between the two crowds. But part of what made Jon M. Chu's vision work is that he realized that the relationship between film and theater is not hierarchal--there are also things that film can do that theater cannot, and he designed this Wicked adaptation with that in mind. 

Footlight Parade (1933)

    The appeal of early musicals was the ability to represent the pageantry of theatrical performance in such a way that you could not experience watching it from your seat in an auditorium. The ability to move the camera through a space or to cut between locations spontaneously open up all sorts of opportunities for musical expression. Chu saw many such opportunities with this material.

    "Dancing Through Life," for example, is a very well-staged number in the Broadway show. The movie, though, turned it into a kaleidoscopic fever dream by introducing the tornado wheel as a major set piece within the number--something that is darn near impossible to translate in theater. This adaptation further benefited from capturing the wide expanse of the Munchkinland fields or keying in on the closeups of Elphaba's embarrassment as she wades through the jeering crowd at the Ozdust Ballroom. That's really what made this adaptation so powerful, it wasn't just a filmed version of a stage musical. The cast and crew took the DNA of the Wicked production and reorganized it into an organism that was distinctly cinematic. 

    It might seem like these first two points are in competition with one another, but there is substantial overlap between the two parties if you know how to look. Musical film and musical theater are distinct but complimentary spaces that often share custody within the fandom of musicals. And the ability to speak fluently with both languages has historically been undervalued in film circles. 

3. Know Your Material, And Know It Well, But Don't Marry Yourself To It

    This is a general principle for adaptation. It's always easy to say, "just do it like the original, stupid," but art doesn't thrive in a container. Artists need to be free to leave their own imprint on a story when the opportunity for improvement presents itself.  

    Let me say that ... this is absolutely what one would call a "faithful adaptation." I'd estimate like 85-90% of the lines from the stage show make the jump. And that is a huge reason why the show's fanbase was so happy to reward it. But a lot of what fans of the source material are talking about have more to do with things that weren't in the stage show. To list a couple of examples ... 

    There's nothing in the Broadway show dictating that Glinda cannot perform magic--that the famous Glinda Bubble is just an illusion. We knew that she specifically can't read The Grimmerie, but the films took things one step further by putting magic totally beyond Glinda's reach at the start. Threading that plotline into the narrative of these films reinforced a very powerful arc. And something like the door shot right after "For Good" became a touchstone within the fandom after the actors discovered it in rehearsal. 

    The best change that either film made was probably letting Glinda and Elphaba reunite a little sooner than they did in the source material. This makes the whole chapter with Elphaba's confrontation of The Wizard make much more sense, and it also gives them some much needed shared screentime. The filmmakers also saw opportunities to more authentically represent the disabled community in how they portrayed Nessa's character, and so they rewrote the script to accommodate that. If Universal had just defaulted to what existed only in the source material, they would have missed out on a lot. 

    

    A key thread with adaptation is that when you understand the merit and logic of a story's composition, you know how to make alterations in a way that only deepens the themes of the story. 

4. Don't Be Scared of Fantasy

    Film as a whole started drifting more toward hard realism in the wake of new Hollywood, which saw a greater emphasis on things like naturalistic acting and subdued color palettes, and this is one of the main reasons why musicals and their inherent fantasticality haven't enjoyed reliable residency in the 21st century.

    With some specific exceptions, basically every post-Cabaret musical defaulted to a naturalistic presentation of music--even when the story didn't really permit it. Les Miserables is probably the movie that navigated this the best, but it had to arrive at some compromises to pull that off--and is also probably the most controversial menu item within the musical fandom. Even our other live-action fantasy musicals of the century--re: the Disney remakes--have also tried keeping one foot in the land of realism, even when it does not serve the story. ("These fish may talk, sure, but you know, they talk realistically. They're still fish, guys.") I'm also referring to that thing where movie adaptations will convert musical lyrics into spoken dialogue, again, trying not to overwhelm viewers with too much singing. 

    But the Wicked films knew better than to deny themselves the very splashy, fairy-tale aesthetic that the story deserves. You don't have your student body arrive for freshman orientation in a gondola because you're endeavoring to be "realistic." And the only times the Wicked movies really scaled back the singing was with some of Madame Morrible's lines in "Thank Goodness," as well as a brief segment of "Wicked Witch of the East," which was also structured quite a bit different from the stage show anyway. This all made Wicked very unique amongst other musicals, particularly from the last quarter-century. 

    And Wicked threaded a very tight stitch to make this work. There was a big emphasis within the production to make the film tangible, realistic, and grounded. That's how we get gigantical physical sets and live-singing. But the purpose here was less to water down the bombasticism of the material and more to give the performers and the audience a stronger tether to the dream. 

    Yes, there is a system within musicals. The music has to make sense within the universe you're presenting. But that universe can itself be dreamlike and rich with magical, even sentimental imagery if you know how to negotiate with your audience. 

5. Build the Production Around the Needs of the Story, Not the Other Way Around

    This should be the standard within every mode of film, but musicals in particular tend to be subject to the lack of imagination on part of studios who think they can stuff a musical-shaped peg into a non-musical hole. They try to negotiate with essential tent poles of the genre and then dare to be surprised when the whole thing caves in on itself. 

    Adapting Wicked onto the big screen proved a tremendous challenge--hence, it took Universal like twenty years to make it work. The biggest stumbling block was probably the sheer scope of the story. 

    A lot of the things that inflated the runtime of the films came down to necessary interstitial material--like establishing shots--that live theater doesn't lean on in the same way. The stage show is also skim on things like chase sequences, which fit naturally into the epic fantasy landscape of Wicked, but are difficult to represent onstage. The guard pursuit preceding "Defying Gravity," for example, is not in the stage show, and pt. 2 has even more sequences like this. (This is one of the main reasons why anytime I come across a paid writer griping about how "they already told this story in 2 1/2 hours on stage, why couldn't they just do that on film?" I have to put myself in time-out ...)

    Many of the musical numbers in the film are more important thematically than narratively. You could in theory drop "I'm Not That Girl" or "Thank Goodness" and still understand the story. And in order to fit the parameters of a normal film, there was reportedly pressure to do a little of that trimming. But not only are those numbers essential pieces for bargaining with the fans, they become important cradles for the emotions of the story to grow. Elphaba and Glinda's final resting places don't feel earned unless we've followed the chain all the way through. Those are steps you can't skip. 

    And so, faced with these restraints, they asked for a bigger container. And on the flip side of two box office runs, I don't think Universal regrets their decision.

    Of course, much of the reason they were even allowed to ask for that is no doubt because of the formidable fanbase of the original property. That's not something every potential musical project will have. But the broader lesson of shaping your vessel according to the needs of the story is one that has universal applicability. 

    The overarching lesson is that musicals as a form are worth investing in. When you know how to pull them off, they can be impressive, even downright formidable. In Chu's own words, 

    "... I love this job because we can take big swings. It’s the only medium where you can get thousands of people to build a spaceship, essentially, and take people to another planet.”

    “If you’re not going to take a giant swing, what are you doing here? This is why I fell in love with movies. Watching ‘E.T.’ or ‘Batman’ or ‘Jaws,’ where we all gather and experience something bigger than ourselves.”

    I think perhaps the hope I had for this movie, that was a little unfair for such a colossal project, was that it was singlehandedly going to turn the tides for how this very stigmatized brand of filmmaking would be perceived by outside eyes. Like, this was going to singlehandedly rescue musicals from the kiddie table. This was going to do what In the Heights, Cyrano, and West Side Story were not able to do. That may have been asking too much from just ... well, two movies, one project. But I'm also coming to appreciate what it means to be a part of a process, to see the life cycle of the musical and its impact unfold over the course of several rounds on the carrousel. 

    No part of me thinks that the fire this movie lit was all just performative, ceremonial, or transitory. Cinema offers many shining lights and many safe spaces, yet the musical has always been uniquely equipped to capture the imagination of the masses. And the efforts exerted with these two films from thousands of artists have brought so much awareness to what it looks like when that potential is realized. Something like that's bound to have an echo. 

    I look forward to seeing where Hollywood takes the genre next, and vice-versa. 

            --The Professor