The movie adaptation of Wicked continues to be a phenomenon seven weeks after its release. Already the highest-grossing musical adaptation of all time, as of January 2025. it has become the 29th movie in history to pass the $450 million domestic box office total. This is particularly impressive, given that you can now find this smash hit available digitally.
We are learning more about how the movie was created and what to expect next as time passes and Jon M. Chu (director) and Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) recently opened up about the way that they brought the fan-favorite song "Defying Gravity" to its full potential in the movie's exhilarating finale.
How much of the Defying Gravity scene was an effect?
There's no doubt that this adaptation of the Wicked Witch of the West's origin sotry needed a helping hand from visual effects teams. The Emerald City, home of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is magnificent in its scope and detail, but audiences don't really get a grasp of its enormity until we see Elphaba and her best friend Glinda flee the Wizard and his guards to the city's uppermost levels. At a crucial point, Elphaba smashes through a window and begins plummeting in a kind of free-fall. She recovers and reclaims her power to soar above the world that has rejected her. It requires incredible scope to do it well.
Deadline remarked in its coverage of comments made by the creative team that "Unlimited is not just a melodic lyric...[but] also reflects the determination of those in front of and behind the camera that brought Wicked's piece de resistance "Defying Gravity" to life on screen. While Erivo had the option to use a pre-recorded track, she sang the song live for the scene. The song is technically demanding in terms of range and rhythmic complexity, but Cynthia had other challenges:
"We had to work on how to use what was available to create the sound we needed to create...You use the extension of the rib cage in your back, the sides to create the air, the tension in the muscle, in the legs in, in your body, in your chest, in your back, in your neck even to make sure that there is the simulation of gravity in the body, which you don't have when you're in the air."Cynthia Erivo
And she was in the air, "strapped into a harness as she soared around on artificially strong wind in studio that would hopefully impress the likes of Dorothy Gale." The VFX team even had to reckon with the fact that her acrobatics wouldn't allow Erivo to wear her iconic cape during parts of filming due to the harness and wires used. Said Pablo Helman, "The cape is kind of a character in itself."
When the moment came, the work certainly paid off. Erivo worked with the musical's composer Stephen Schwartz and the arranger Stephen Oremus to adapt the original version of the song and "tried a couple of different things, and they just didn't connect." Finally, "this one just naturally happened...It just landed that way. And when I did, it just felt right." Chu reflected that as the song came to its end, "I'm looking around all the crew are crying, and I'm like, I'I hope we pressed record.'"
Wicked can still be found in cinemas at the time of writing or you can bring it home digitally.