As anticipation builds for Wicked: For Good, the second act to 2024’s Oscar-winning Wicked, director Jon M. Chu has revealed in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly that the upcoming film will feature not one, but two new bespoke songs—that’s one tune for each witch.
While Chu didn’t announce the songs’ titles, the outlet teased that the new tracks by composer Stephen Schwartz are no “mere bids for a Best Original Song nomination.” In fact, Chu says the new songs are deeply needed additions to build out the film, which is based on the stage play’s “notoriously rushed and nowhere near as well-regarded” second act.
“Even after we recorded them,” Chu says, “even after we put them in the movie, we kicked the tires on them to make sure that we had to put them in this movie. Otherwise, it wasn’t worth it.”
And just as Glinda and Elphaba are two sides of the same coin, both the songs share themes—albeit from different points of view.
“They’re questioning, ‘What is home? And what happens when you are fighting for a home that you realize doesn’t even want you there, or was never meant for you? Do you defend it? Do you fight for it? Does anyone else think of home the same as you?’. Those questions are very interesting and relevant to Elphaba’s journey,” Chu said.
And as Glinda begins to interrogate her own decisions and worldview, the “good witch” comes to realize she may be in the wrong, Chu added. “Glinda is the one to ultimately pop her own bubble,” the director said. “She has to leave her privilege to actually see other people’s struggles and fight for justice and equality.”
While these themes might seem to share, uh, certain similarities with current world events, Chu was more diplomatic, suggesting instead that the themes of the songs are “timeless.”
“They do what timeless stories do! They ask us elemental questions of being human, not just the great parts—the celebratory, joyful parts of being human — but the scary, dark parts that test us. Everybody thinks it’s about this time, and yet it’s about all time. We are a little bit good and we all are a little bit wicked, and how do we navigate that?”
As Chu points out, both Glinda and Elphaba have a right to defend themselves and their world in their own way. “Both witches are trying to find their way home. Both of these songs are about how to do that, and it’s questions that I’ve always wanted to hear from them in the stage show, but never got to. We get to take our time and explore those questions,” Chu said.
We’ll find out if the two witches ever work out the answers to those questions when Wicked: For Good opens in theaters nationwide this November 21.