Jon M. Chu removed “Defying Gravity” from Evil: for good.
The upcoming musical sequel could have kicked off with another rendition of the hit song that closed out 2024 evilBut the 46-year-old director eventually cut the track after a test screening of his film Evil: for good – Deciding “we don’t need to go back” to the first movie.
During an interview with Collider, Cho said, “What I did in the premiere was take us back to Defying Gravity.” We finished Defying Gravity again, and then we went into it, just to bring people back to it.
“What I discovered is that we don’t need it. We don’t need to go back. I thought people needed to be reminded of the feelings of that relationship.” [between Elphaba and Glinda] Before getting into this relationship, where they weren’t together anymore, but after that show, I was like, “Oh, we just want to be in this relationship. People are working with us.”
“Defying gravity, that sensation at the beginning of this movie, is not helping us. We’ve lived it. We’ve been processing that. Now let’s move forward.”
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Evil: for good – which is based on the second half of the Broadway musical evil – follows Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) as their relationship reaches a breaking point when the Good Witch is forced to choose between her best friend and the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum).
The film also stars Jonathan Bailey as Prince Fierrot, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Ethan Slater as Puck, and Colman Domingo as the Cowardly Lion.
“The risks are much higher,” Zhou quipped. Evil: for goodThe film deals with the complex friendship between Elphaba and Glinda.
He explained: “It’s all about the girls, as they say. And as we said to each other over and over again, ‘It’s all about the girls, stupid.’ These girls, if you thought they were great in the first movie, in the second movie, they’re actually shattering the dream. They’re actually rebuilding these characters.”
“They actually give them evil and good, and then they have to forgive each other and be reborn in a new form. For me, that’s why we do it.” evil“.
“Of course, there’s bigger action, bigger drama. And the stakes are much higher. But at the end of the day, this beautiful story of this friendship, and the things that bring us together as a world, I think we need that more than ever.”
Chu added that he would “definitely” consider releasing him evil and Evil: for good as a single cinematic experience so that the audience could see all the “really interesting scenes” he had to leave out.
the Crazy rich asians “I really think that for both films, we put in the scenes that needed to be there. The first one was a little bit harder because we had a lot of extra scenes, and I needed to hone that thing. It was a really difficult thing to even get,” the director said.
“I wanted to make it shorter, and I couldn’t find a way without compromising the feel of the movie. My goal was much shorter, then two hours and 45 minutes. We had to cut a lot of really interesting scenes, great scenes, in which I think you see more of the character, but it just wasn’t worth it in the overall experience of the movie.”

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