'Defying Gravity' is one of the most iconic musical theater songs of all time, which makes translating it from stage to screen a particularly tall task. That's the challenge Wicked director Jon M. Chu was faced with in his new adaptation – made even more intimidating by the fact that 'Defying Gravity' closes the entire film, since the movie covers Act 1 of the musical (with Part 2 finishing the story when it arrives next year).
"The alternative was not possible, to be honest," Chu tells us of dividing the story when we meet with him in London. "We tried to make it into one movie, and you had to rip out songs and it became not Wicked. They had tried for 20 years to do that. I think the decision to make it one really opened the doors to like, 'Okay, we have to believe these characters.' You get away with things on stage that you can't get away with in a movie. The audience is more skeptical in a movie, and so the emotional turns for the actors and for the characters have to be very solid. So it came out of a necessity more than anything."
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