Wicked came out this past November to rave reviews and blowout box office; it's made nearly $700 million in theaters so far, and picked up an additional $70 million in the first week after it became available to rent or buy on premium video on demand (for $20 and $30 respectively) on New Year's Eve. At this point, it looks all but certain that it will make over one billion dollars, which surely makes Universal Pictures very very very happy. And there's a sequel, Wicked: For Good, coming out on November 21 of this year, so there will be another chance for Universal to clean up.
These Wicked movies adapt the hugely successful Broadway musical of the same name; the first movie adapted the first act and the sequel will adapt the second. "For Good" is the name of a climactic number from Act 2, if you're wondering where they got that title.
I suppose they could have just called the sequel Wicked: Part Two, but director Jon M. Chu sounds dead set against that. “Who wants a movie called ‘Wicked: Part Two’?” he asked Variety. “On the script, it always said, ‘For Good,’ and so it was just a point of like, ‘Do we really want to call this “Part Two”?’ And nobody wants that.”
"I mean, that’s the destination. ‘For Good,’ we know, is like, ‘Where are we going with this movie? Let’s finish this thing.'"
I know Chu is just making remarks off the cuff here, but they're annoying to hear, because the Wicked titles have been wonky from the start. First of all, did you notice how the first Wicked isn't called Wicked: Part One? You only find out that this is part one of two when the movie starts playing. I guarantee you that some people bought a ticket assuming they were going to see the whole musical adapted to the screen and were unpleasantly surprised when they found out otherwise; when I saw Wicked in the theater a few people audibly groaned when the "Part One" subtitle popped up. I didn't mind because I loved the movie itself, but the choice not to advertise that this was the first movie in a two-part series was definitely deliberate and definitely a sleazeball move.
I also don't like Chu acting like putting "Part Two" at the end of a movie title is some kind of aesthetic sin. Dune: Part Two opened in 2024, was awesome, and got tons of people to come to the theater. "Nobody wants that," he says. Nobody cares about that, more like. I also kinda call bullshit on him implying that the title of the sequel was always "For Good." If that were true, why wasn't that title revealed until a month after the first movie had already come out?
Mostly I'm just slightly irritated at Chu being precious about titles after he and Universal pulled that nonsense with the title of the first movie. But everything is forgiven if the movie is good, and the first Wicked movie was really good. Hopefully Wicked: For Good will keep that up. I mean, the promise is right there in the title.
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h/t The A.V. Club