Jon M. Chu Defends Splitting ‘Wicked’ Into 230,400 Successive Images

LOS ANGELES—Making his case that the story of Elphaba and Glinda was too big for one picture, director Jon M. Chu defended on Wednesday his decision to split his new film Wicked into 230,400 successive images. “Narratively speaking, it just made sense to break the movie up into hundreds of thousands of pictures,” Chu said in response to criticism from fans of the Broadway musical, explaining that a series of smoothly transitioning images that tricked viewers’ brains into perceiving motion was the best way to adapt the story for the big screen. “At the end of the day, the benefits of creating an illusion of continuous movement throughout the film seemed to outweigh any drawbacks. And perhaps a bit of illusion is appropriate in a movie that features a wizard famous for his trickery and deception.” Pressed for further comment, Chu acknowledged caving to studio demands and hinted that a future director’s cut of Wicked would display a single still image on the screen for the entire duration of the film.

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