Wicked: Part 2 will change the original musical more than Part 1 did

Wicked, the new movie based on the hit Broadway show, is officially a success. Actually, it's a historic success: it's the highest-grossing movie ever to be based on a Broadway musical, at least at the domestic box office; and the soundtrack is topping multiple Billboard charts. Audiences are primed for Wicked: Part 2, which will close out this prequel to The Wizard of Oz when it comes out next November.

Wicked: Part 1 adapts the first act of the Broadway musical, and it pretty much includes everything fans are expecting. There are a couple of new bits — a chase sequence with flying moneys here, a couple of crowd-pleasing cameos there — but generally it sticks very close to the original show by composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz.

And that's despite Schwartz himself trying to change up some aspects. For instance, he told The Times that he'd considered putting a new spin on the song "Popular," which is sung by Glinda when she and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the future Wicked Witch of the West, become friends. "[L]et's refresh the rhymth. Let’s, maybe, I don’t know, hip-hop it up a little bit," he mulled. But pop star Ariana Grande, who played Glinda, pushed back. "Ariana said, ‘Absolutely not, don’t do it. I want to be Glinda, not Ariana Grande playing Glinda.'”

Grande did acquiesce to a new ending to "Popular" that featured her dancing by herself in a hallway. “Ariana was a little hesitant about it, but I told her that if I had thought of it for the original show, this is how it would have been," Schwartz said. "Once she was reassured that this new bit of music was coming out of character, she was on board.”

How Wicked: Part 2 will change the stage show (Beware SPOILERS)

Speaking as someone who saw Wicked on stage once years ago, I didn't even notice the new ending, so I guess it worked for me. In general, I liked how close the movie stuck to the original musical, but there are more changes on the way for Wicked: Part 2, which adapts Act II of the stage show. In fact, Schwartz has written two whole new songs!

"The storytelling required it, and therefore they were created — the intention was that they were organic and not imposed on the movie," Schwartz told The Messenger last year. "There's new stuff that I think the fans will enjoy. But our hope and intention is that the people to whom the story and the show are important will not in any way be disappointed, but will be thrilled by what they will see and the new stuff that's been added and the way film is used."

And we've heard about other changes on the way. Marissa Bode, who plays Elphaba's wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose, told PEOPLE about an upcoming scripting change to a crucial scene in Act 2, when Nessarose asks Elphaba to use her magic to render her able to walk. According to Bode, director Jon M. Chu told her that, “‘Hey, we changed this part in this way just so that it felt less like a fixing moment.’” Rather than Nessarose "pleading for a disability to be fixed," the new version of the scene is “just focusing on the magic in general and the magic of the story.”

I'm not sure what exactly that means and obviously Bode can't tell us (“And that's all I can say, I think!” she said) but I liked the first Wicked movie a lot and I'm inclined to think that Chu and company know what they're doing for Part 2, which will be out in theaters on November 21, 2025. See you next Thanksgiving.

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h/t The A.V. Club