The second installment of “Wicked,” “Wicked Part Two: For Good,” will start filming in London, England, in 2024. Elphaba Thropp’s journey to become the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West is the focus of the movie, which is based on Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s eponymous musical and is an adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” and the characters from L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” A well-liked young woman named Galinda Upland plays a role in her life.
The first of the two parts of the movie is set in London as well. Beginning in December 2022, Sky Studios in Elstree, Hertfordshire, served as the main setting for filming “Wicked: Part One.” The continuing SAG-AFTRA strike in July 2023 caused a delay in the first part’s production.
Elphaba Thropp voice actress Cynthia Erivo announced that the second film’s script reading started in June 2023. The first part’s production might not wrap up until after the actors’ strike is over, at which point it might resume in London. The city is maybe the busiest centre for the production of entertainment in the UK. Some recently released productions shot in London include “Barbie,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” “The Flash,” “Secret Invasion,” “Heart of Stone,” “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” etc.
The two ‘Wicked’ films are being directed by Jon M. Chu, who is most known for his work on the films ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ ‘In the Heights,’ and a few ‘Step Up’ installments. Chu said in a statement about coming up with the idea for the second installment, “As we prepped the production over the last year, it became difficult to shoehorn the tale of ‘Wicked’ into a single film without doing some significant damage to it. “As we attempted to omit songs or reduce the number of characters, those choices started to feel fatal compromises to the original material that has amused us all for so long. We made the decision to offer ourselves a larger canvas and produce two ‘Wicked’ films, he continued.
The creators of the original musical, Schwartz and Holzman, also wrote the films. The movie soundtracks are also composed by Schwartz. “It was incredibly challenging for us to continue after ‘Defying Gravity’ without a break. The scriptwriter provided an explanation for why the movie was split into two acts in a statement made available to The Schwartz scenario. “That song is written specifically to bring a curtain down, and whatever scene to follow it without a break just seemed enormously anti-climactic,” she said.
The ‘Wicked’ films also feature Ariana Grande as Galinda Upland, Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero Tigelaar, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz, Ethan Slater as Boq, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Marissa Bode as Nessarose Thropp, Bowen Yang as Pfannee, and others. The cast also includes Adam James (Glinda’s father) and Bronwyn James (ShenShen), Keala Settle (Miss Coddle), Aaron Teoh (Avaric), Colin Michael Carmichael (Professor Nikidik), and Aaron Teoh.
The two films are made by Marc Platt and David Stone, who also produced the original musical. ‘Wicked Part Two: For Good’ was slated for release on November 26, 2025 by Universal Pictures, almost a year after the original film’s conceivable release date of November 27, 2024.
