Jon M. Chu unveils a new Wicked: For Good clip featuring real make-up and practical effects for the Tin Man and Scarecrow.

At the BFI London Film Festival, director Jon M. Chu dropped a tantalizing glimpse at Wicked: For Good. In doing so, he offered a rare window into the creative gamble behind the sequel. The centerpiece: a fresh clip depicting Elphaba visiting Glinda on her wedding day, but shadowed by the revelation that key elements, the Tin Man and Scarecrow, are rendered via practical make-up, not digital trickery.

Chu previewed the sequence with dramatic flair:

“By the way, wait until you see the Tin Man and the Scarecrow — these are not digital effects. These are real physical make-up.”

He emphasized the stakes of that choice: “there was no room for error,” conveying the tightrope walk between imagination and tangibility.

A Closer Look: Why This Wicked: For Good Clip Matters

This particular snippet of Wicked: For Good carries outsized weight. On the surface, it’s an emotionally fraught moment with Elphaba intruding upon Glinda’s wedding rites. Still, beneath that lies Chu’s broader ambition: to usher the sequel into darker, more mature thematic terrain.

The emotional tease shows the two secretly reunite after the events of “Defying Gravity,” with Glinda dressed in a sparkling white gown while Elphaba is being huntedby the Wizard’s flying monkeys. A teary Glinda pleads with Elphaba to talk things out with the Wizard, but before she can finish her appeal, Elphaba is gone.

Through the blend of elevated stakes and stark visuals, Chu is signaling that this is not a mere echo of Wicked (2024) but a deliberate tonal pivot. One that wrestles with the consequences of power, identity, and choice.

Wicked: For Good – The Art of Doing It “For Real”

In an age when CGI dominates spectacle, Chu’s insistence on physical make-up is a bold stand. Rather than embed the Tin Man or Scarecrow into a purely digital realm, the team sculpted them in the real world. This marks a practical turn that brings a certain tactile weight to these mythic figures.

That doesn’t mean visual effects are absent from the project. In fact, Wicked: For Good leans on high-end VFX work in post, notably from Industrial Light & Magic and Framestore, with Pablo Helman as VFX supervisor. The strategy, then, seems to lie in marrying the authenticity of make-up with the flexibility of subtle digital augmentation: practical where it matters most, digital when scale demands it. Chu’s “no room for error” warning underscores how risky (and tightly executed) that fusion must be. A misstep in make-up, lighting, or performance could tear the illusion.

The Song “For Good”

As for the song “For Good,” Chu said that Erivo and Grande’s performance of it is “the most beautiful, emotional version of it I’ve ever heard in my life.” “That song is about literally what they’re doing with their eyes,” Chu said of shooting the “For Good” scene. “It’s the most covered song, it’s the song that everybody has heard many, many times and many different versions, but the advantage that we have in this is that you know these characters.”

He continued: “The way they were singing it to each other almost wasn’t singing, it was just like communicating. And you’ve got to just let them do it and let them drive. It became like, ‘Filmmakers, get out of the way.’”

Behind the Scenes: Production, Ambition & Release Strategy

To understand the significance of this clip, it helps to step back into the film’s larger production arc:

• Wicked: For Good is the direct sequel to Wicked (2024), adapting the second act of the Stephen Schwartz / Winnie Holzman stage musical.
• The film was written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, produced by Universal and Marc Platt Productions.
• Editing and visual effects work have been significant undertakings. At one point, editing was paused in 2024 so Chu could finish post on the first film and better calibrate the sequel’s tone.
• The project’s VFX pipeline is ambitious: ILM and Framestore are tapped for major effects work.
• The scheduled release date is November 21, 2025, with pre-release events including advanced screenings (Nov 17 for Amazon Prime members, Nov 20 for general audiences).

Chu’s decision to unveil this particular clip at a major festival suggests he’s positioning Wicked: For Good not just as a blockbuster follow-up, but as a more layered, darker, and technically daring leap forward.

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