The ‘evil’ writers burden the people who spoil the plot of the musical

It’s hard to scroll through TikTok without seeing a video about Universal’s latest hit, Wicked. While every video is different, all comment sections share at least a few murmurs of the same thought: “Don’t spoil the rest Wicked!”

While Wickedfilm, shows only one act of the stage production (the second part will appear in theaters next November), the production of the series has been carried out for more than two decades. The question arises – can it be broken? The screenwriter of the film, Winnie Holzman, who also wrote the book for Wicked‘s stage musical, and Dana Fox, don’t seem entirely convinced. “It didn’t open (the musical) yesterday, it’s been playing for 21 years,” jokes Holzman on Zoom with The Hollywood Reporter. “Not only in America, everywhere. It was on tour and it was in many languages.”

Holzman says filmmaker Jon M. Chu, along with everyone else who worked on the film, “wanted to stay true to the spirit.” Wicked’s stage production. Fox says she has a rule with her kids, and anyone else who might ask, about spoiling what’s to come. “There is a show that exists. There are some answers you may know, whatever it is. If you discover it yourself, you can know these things,” she says. “And nothing else.”

Holzman and Fox, who recently won a Critics’ Choice nomination for the film’s screenplay, don’t blame anyone for worrying about spoilers and say they’ve been touched by fans’ passionate responses. “I really feel for them. I really want to,” says Holzman. He later adds: “I have to pay tribute to the people who have their answers because we wanted to. Passion is beautiful. It shows how they gave their hearts.”

Wickedstarring Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Galinda/Glinda, tells the untold story of the Witches of Oz. Film and upcoming Wicked: Part Twowhich will hit theaters in November 2025, is based on the 2003 musical of the same name, which was originally adapted from Gregory Maguire’s best-selling novel. Academy Award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz returns to the series to adapt the musical for the screen.

Holzman and Fox say they’ve been feeling the love ever since the movie hit theaters. “Love is so tangible from my point of view,” says Holzman. “We get responses from people who are so genuine and honest, and that’s why we do this.”

While Holzman was with him almost the entire time WickedA long drive, Fox says the experience is new to her. “I think Winnie and Stephen have experienced this for so long with the show, but I’m new to this,” she explains. “Feeling that love of people and how much it seems to move them. … Every day that we worked together for years, we thought, ‘This has to be the best thing that anybody’s ever seen because people really care about this musical, so we have to take care of it.'”

“Responsibility is a very key word,” says Holzman, adding that she’s not complaining, but she certainly felt the pressure when adapting the musical for the screen. “All of us who worked together, we just felt that we had to give everything we had, and then however people would accept it. That’s a part we’re not in charge of.”

Holzman suggests that “handmade” is the perfect way to describe it Wicked script. “We just carefully put it together with a lot of thought and care,” she says. “Every word (of the script) is so painstakingly drawn out. I mean, single lines that are talked about for weeks,” adds Fox.

Fox notes that she went into the project believing it would be a little easier because she also has “one of the most amazing shows of all time” and The Wizard of Oz as source material. However, the writer revealed that it was made even more difficult by “the pressure to do right by the source material” and “to do right by the fans of the source material”.

“In our audience, the first time we saw it together, every time the girls hit a note that was slightly different from the one in the show, people screamed at the top of their lungs,” she says, eliciting a laugh from Holzman.

Changes during the adjustment process were, and obviously are, a hot topic of discussion. “We never asked ‘How can we make it Wicked into something else?'” says Holzman. “However, that is something else. It’s a completely different version of the same thing.”

As Holzman pointed out, the spirit Wicked remains at all times in the first part of the film. The film stays true to the play, however, and both Holzman and Fox point out that the decision to split the film into two parts allowed many moments to be expanded. “There’s almost no aspect of the plot, there really isn’t one, that hasn’t been explored, reinvented, deepened, given more time from start to finish,” Holzman says of what would have been left if it had been just one movie. She notes that the team was able to explore Elphaba’s childhood, something she and Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the music and lyrics for the musical, had always wanted to do.

“Just to be super specific about it, think about the length of the songs and try to add the second act songs to this movie. There is no time for one dialogue,” says Fox. “That would mean dropping songs, and every song is a fan favorite.”

Holzman adds that both she and Schwartz wanted new songs. “The reason why we wanted to have new songs in the second part in the first place, and that’s the only thing I’ll say about the second part, is because we had these ideas about songs that we kind of fell in love with, and as Dana says, we couldn’t even do the whole to place music in one film,” she says. Holzman also notes that any changes made to the first installment were made to “increase the intensity or raise the stakes,” never just for the sake of it.

The writers also considered fan theories that Glinda and Elphaba’s relationship could be romantic. Author Gregory Maguire, who wrote the book on which the musical is based, recently told Them that the romantic subtext between the two main witches was intentional on his part. Grande also recently suggested that possibility in an interview, saying that “Glinda might be a little closeted. you never know. Give him a little more time.”

But Holzman doesn’t seem to have set out to write an original musical book or film with this thought in mind. “For me, that’s not it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel grateful if the queer community feels queer in the film,” she says. “There are very real reasons why that would be the case, and I think that’s wonderful.”

She adds: “In a funny way, it’s really none of my business. I want people to have their own answer,” and says the show is mostly about the kind of friendship that, pardon the pun, changes someone forever. “They both have a destiny and they needed each other to achieve that destiny, and that’s not fulfilling enough for me?” she adds later.

Wicked continued to grow at the box office. The Universal film broke records for the biggest opening for a musical adaptation with an estimated $114 million at the domestic box office and dethrone Fat just a week after its release, it became the highest-grossing Broadway musical adaptation of all time.

Wicked: Part Two is set to hit theaters on November 21, 2025.