Less than 24 hours after unveiling exclusive Wicked footage in Las Vegas, filmmaker Jon M. Chu found his way into the spotlight of another CinemaCon stage inside Caesars Palace, this time for a special luncheon in his honor at which he revealed secrets about filming the two-part epic musical.
“It was pretty magical last night,” Chu told The Hollywood Reporter’s co-editor-in-chief Nekesa Mumbi Moody, who moderated a fireside chat with the filmmaker after he was presented a trophy for cultural impact in filmmaking (by his In the Heights star Ariana Greenblatt). Chu has been in the editing room while managing a full household of four young children, so he said that being in Las Vegas where he could sleep and hang out with others, “I’m, like, ‘Let’s go.’”
Chu, fresh from the Colosseum stage where he appeared during Universal Pictures’ slate presentation, opened up on the 30-minute Wicked segment that lit up the festivities and featured Chu, producer Marc Platt, leading ladies Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, along with other members of the starry cast including Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum.
The filmmaker got choked up during that presentation (as did Grande) while he was speaking about casting Erivo to play Elphaba and Grande as Glinda, and Moody asked him to source the emotions of that moment. Chu said that there was no guarantee they would make Wicked had they not been able to find actors capable of taking on the demanding parts. “When you find those two, you know it’s destiny,” he said, adding it was a spiritual connection as well.
“We’ve gone through so many journeys together,” Chu continued of his actors. Grande and Erivo both went through “personal things” in their lives to find the truth in these characters. He also experienced a transformational time as his family and career expanded. “That’s why it had that impact on me.”
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