When it was first announced that Jonon M. Hu, the director behind the films like "Crazy Rich Asians" and "At the heights", will adapt Steven Schwartz's hit, Broadway, "wicked", news emerged shortly thereafter that the film would be divided into two. At some level, It makes sense to split the "wicked" in halfgiving it a Chinese two -part structure that imitates the stage version. With all this, the films were originally called "Evil: First Part" and "Evenly: Part Two", and the first part climbed in cinema in November 2024, Crushing the box office and earning raven reviews from critics. ThenIn December of that year, Yu revealed (the DiversityAmong other places) that the second part of the epic film would actually be called "wicked: for good", taking the title of a serious duet, sung by Elfaba Trop (Cynthia Erivo) and her best friend turned the political enemy Glinda Good Witch (Ariana Grande-butter) in the second act of the show.

So why the change? As he told Variety in early January 2025, "For Good" is just ... a better title. "Who wants a film called" Evenly: Part Two "?" He heard rhetorically the red carpet exit for the National Board Review. "The script is always said," For good ", and so was the point of it," do we really want to call this "two part"? "And no one wants it."

He explained: "I mean, that's the destination." For good, "we know, is how," Where do we go with this movie? Let's get this job done, "Hu continued. OK then!

The division of huge films into two parts is nothing new; Ever since the "Harry Potter and the Death Sanctuary" received the two -stage treatment as early as 2011, the studio (quite short) tried this over and over with the expected editions to try and drain more money from the project. According to Jonon M. Yu, however, the story of the "wicked" - which, in case you live under a rock, is foretelling the "Wizard of Oz" based on Gregory Maguier's novel "Wicked: The Life and the Time of the Wicked Witch in the West", which focuses The magic (and dark) journey of Elfaba Trop, because she became a wicked witch in the West - was just too massive to be contained in a movie.

"Since we have prepared this production over the past year, it has become increasingly clear that it would be impossible to fight the story of the" wicked "in a movie without doing real harm to it," Yu wrote on x (formerly known as Twitter) While the film was still in the early stages as early as April 2022. "As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises on the original material that all had fun , but also two !!!! Tony's "Broadway" show is right.

There's one Huge The reason that the "wicked" really had to scatter through two films, in the words of Broadway Steven Schwartz ... And it all comes down to a little diet called "defiant gravity". Yes, the song that closes Act 1 of the "wicked" and convinced music theater children around the world during the fact that they could also appear as a synthy erivo or the original Elfaba Idina Menzel on Broadway, is only Too epic It simply happened halfway through the film, as Schwartz revealed in June 2022.

"It was very difficult for us to pass the" defiance of gravity "without a break," Schwartz explained in a newsletter in honor of him as "Schwartz's stage" (through Diversity.) "That song was written specifically to lower the curtain, and whatever the scene to follow without a break, it just seemed a huge anti-climactic."

Not only that, but Schwartz said that he and he, along with the rest of the film's creative team, tried Continue "malicious" in just one movie and simply could not understand how to make it work. "The truth is that we have tried to make a movie for some time, even if it had to be a very long movie," Schwartz said in a statement. "But we were running in two problems. The first is that even as a very long single movie, we demanded that we cut or omit things we wanted to include and that we think the fans of the show and the story will appreciate." Add it to the "defiant gravity" to all this, and this decision, after all, makes sense.

"Available: One part" is available for renting or buying digital streaming platforms nowAnd the retired "Wicked: For good" hits theaters on November 21, 2025.