The story of the mystical magical land of Oz is continued in Director Jon M. Chu’s musical fantasy, Wicked: For Good.

In the follow-up to his 2024 feature, Wicked, Chu’s film resumes the story of Elphaba, the misunderstood future Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the popular future Good Witch of the North, as their unlikely friendship is tested by the Wizard’s regime and the arrival of Dorothy Gale from Kansas.

On November 9, after the DGA membership screening in New York, Chu discussed the making of Wicked: For Good during a Q&A moderated by Director Rob Marshall (The Little Mermaid). He also spoke about the film during a conversation moderated by Director Ava DuVernay (Origin) following the DGA Los Angeles screening on November 23.

During the Los Angeles conversation, Chu described his process for scaling the movie to keep the heart of the film from being overwhelmed by the visuals.

“Someone once said to me, ‘You know this is this is like carving a sculpture in marble.’ It’s deletion. It’s clarity. It’s such precision that every sound that comes in has to be intentional to the emotion of what you’re saying. The visuals come easy for me and when you have a a big budget, you have a great crew that’s going to cover your ass at every corner so that’s never the issue. It is, ‘What are you saying and what’s your intention in every scene?’ So I make a map of the of the plot, sort of an outline on my on my wall and I put in an emotion next to each scene of what I want people to feel  — whether that’s yearning or resentment or jealousy, or courage, or whatever — and that’s my clarity. Those words change over time when I start working with the actors. Maybe we discover something new. And this is not what the actors are feeling or the characters. This is what I want the audience to feel.”

In addition to Wicked and Wicked: For Good, Chu’s other directorial credits include the feature films In the Heights, Crazy Rich Asians, Now You See Me 2, Step Up 2: The Streets, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never; and episodes of Good Trouble and Home Before Dark. He has been a DGA member since 2007.