Wicked Director Wants to Make a Britney Spears Movie

With Wicked, director Jon M. Chu had to make a two-decade-old stage musical based on a novel from 30 years ago inspired by a movie almost 90 years old that adapted a book from 1900 feel fresh. He did that, in part, by casting a pop star as one of the leads, putting Ariana Grande as Glinda alongside Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. The strategy worked, as Wicked became a screen sensation, the fifth highest grossing movie of the year. And if the sequel Wicked: For Good matches that number, Chu hopes he’ll have enough pull to work with another pop star: Britney Spears.

In an interview with Esquire, Chu enthused about the depths he found in the singer’s 2023 memoir The Woman in Me. “She did what she had to do to survive. She deserves a story that honors that,” Chu declared. “Now that she has her freedom, what does freedom actually cost? And what does that look like? What can we do most to encourage her to be free and not try to turn her into whatever we want her to be.”

Shifting from wizards in Oz to ’90s teen idols might seem like a strange change, but Chu’s career has been full of unexpected turns. Chu made his feature directoral debut with 2008’s Step Up 2: The Streets, a sequel to the Channing Tatum-led dance movie two years earlier. After directing the third entry in the franchise, Chu made two Justin Bieber concert films and, in between, helmed the sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation, before blending ’80s toy franchises with pop music for 2015’s Jem and the Holograms. Already, his post-Wicked schedule includes a film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and an adaptation of the Dr. Seuss book Oh the Places You’ll Go!.

Disparate as these titles may seem, Chu sees one element binding them together. “I am literally in a position that I can get things made, and so I should get as many things made as possible that follow my belief system,” he mused. And that means making joyful movies, no matter what people might say. “Joy can be beautiful,” Chu insisted, somewhat defensively. “It can be controversial. It takes just as much courage to do that. And I’m going to show that it can be just as entertaining.”

“Controversial” might be a strange word to describe a filmography filled with pop stars, toy franchises, and middlebrow musicals, but Chu insists there’s something dangerous even in his crowd-pleasers. He points to Wicked as an example of an entertaining movie that gained political strength. “We’re at a time where it got way more complicated in the world during the making of this movie,” Chu explained. “The relevancy is crazy. [Wicked] was not written for this time. Suddenly, these words mean something different than when we first shot them.”

If those words mean enough to make Wicked: For Good another box office smash, maybe Chu will get the chance to show how “Oops I Did It Again” is his version of “The Internationale.” Maybe he’ll get a chance to make 30-year-old songs feel of their moment.

Wicked: For Good comes to theaters on November 21, 2025.