The whole Broadway show can be done in a 2 hour-ish performance live, there is no justification to stretch this to two movies other than corporate greed milking every IP to the limit
Unless its a planned trilogy with 3 strong stories that could semi-standalone (short of context being lost without the other installments) then any movie that needs more than 2 hours should just be a mini series. You wanna tell a 4 hour long story about the Wizard of Oz? Fine, stick it on Netflix and anyone who wants to binge watch it can to make it “feel like a movie” and those who don’t will have 4 - hour long episodes.
The finale would leave loose ends as long as the cables they’re frayed from, and season 2 will either be canceled or cut short so huge compromises will have to be made and nothing is properly resolved
I'm starting to suspect that this is why I don't watch as many films as I'd like to. They've all become such a time commitment. Show me what you can do with an hour and a half!
Just saw part one. As I had suspected, they would’ve been hard pressed to get both acts into one film.
A Broadway show can get away with a lot more compression. There are no establishing shots on a stage. And Wicked, as a musical, moves. The movie didn’t overstay its welcome, it didn’t waste much time. But it still easily filled its runtime.
Making the two acts into two films was a good call. Though I suspect the second film won’t be as good as the first, since I’ve always preferred act 1 of the Broadway show.
It’s really clear to me that the cast and crew weren’t lying when they said they love the musical and wanted to do right by it.