Wicked producer Marc Platt previewed this year’s Wicked: For Good while speaking about his Producer’s Guild Award-nominated first film on Saturday morning.
At the PGA’s annual breakfast panel for nominees for Theatrical Motion Picture, Platt, who also produced the Broadway show, said he envisioned Glinda as a figure like Robert F. Kennedy Sr., clarifying he means the ’60s politician and presidential candidate, not his son, the current nominee for health department secretary.
Platt said last year’s Wicked was mainly Elphaba’s (Cynthia Erivo) journey to give up the hope of belonging in order to speak truth to power, the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). The film concludes with ‘Defying Gravity’, the act break in the stage musical. Wicked: For Good will show Glinda’s (Ariana Grande) growth, the way RFK stepped up after his brother John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
“He was born to the manor, to the Kennedy clan the way Glinda was,” Platt said. “He became part of politics because it’s what his dad wanted. He was at Joe McCarthy’s side and he was not the leader for the right reasons. Then his brother was assassinated and he went thruugh a real catharsis.”
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By 1968, Platt said, RFK became an admirable leader as New York Senator. “He became a leader because he only wanted to do good for the sake of good,” he explained. “That was a very valuable lesson, the kind of leadership we lack.”
Glinda is the most popular student at Oz’s Shiz University. She will eventually become the Good Witch of the North while Elphaba is painted as the Wicked Witch of the West. Platt said she will take responsibility for that authority in the second film.
“It’s really how she goes from someone who buys into a world she thought she wanted and then comes to understand the consequences of that choice,” Platt said. “[She] comes out another end as a different kind of a person who is viewed as good, but without giving too much away, learns what it really means to be good.”
Platt said he resisted offers to make a Wicked movie for over 20 years. Making a two-part film helped him get comfortable that he wouldn’t have to delete important scenes or songs. Originally, Platt hoped to make one long film with an intermission.
“I remember going to the movies as a kid and watching musicals, or Lawrence of Arabia, that had intermissions,” Platt said. “That was my dream for Wicked, that we do it with intermission. That was a battle I lost.”
Sitting on the panel with Platt was The Brutalist producer Andrew Morrison. The three-and-a-half-hour film includes a 15-minute intermission.
“Brady [Corbet] and Mona [Fastvold] had always written it with an intermission,” Morrison siad. “It was scripted. From the beginning, we knew this was going to be a three-and-a-half-hour-plus film. We thought it would be a fun way to create a communal experience. We were coming out of COVID, people were missing this experience in theaters. It was always the intent.”
Wicked is nominated alongside Dune: Part 2, the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal science-fiction novel. Producer Mary Parent said Villeneuve challenged every department to start afresh in the second film.
“I think the most daunting aspect of Dune: Part 2 was Dune: Part 1,” Parent said. “Denis said himself it was an appetizer. Denis said, ‘We’re not going to have any one set that’s the same. Everything is going to be different, look different.’”
The Substance writer-director-producer Coralie Fargeat was able to bifurcate her own production. The 100-day shooting schedule included a second section devoted to practical effects with a smaller crew than the scenes involving actors Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.
Still, Fargeat found herself having to defend her horrific conclusion. In the film, Elizabeth Sparkle (Moore) uses The Substance to create a younger counterpart, Sue (Qualley). At the end, Sue tries to use The Substance again and creates MonstroElisasue.
“In the script, I had written it as some kind of all her body parts are in the wrong place such as a Picasso,” Fargeat said. “The first screening of the edit that went very wrong with the studio, one of the things they didn’t like was the monster. I said, ‘Okay, so even a monster has to meet some kind of beauty standard?’ It was at that moment, it’s that thing confirmed me the idea, I have to defend my monster. This is exactly what the movie’s about.”
Ahead of Saturday’s 36th PGA Awards, producers from Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, A Real Pain and September 5 were also on the panel. Emilia Pérez director and producer Jacques Audiard pre-recorded answers to questions.
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