It is a perilous act to split one property into two films.

Warner Bros did it with the greatest of ease in the final film adaptation of Harry Potter2010 and 2011 Deathly Hallows, which together raised $2.3 billion worldwide. However, Lionsgate ran into a buzzsaw and tried it with the finale Deviant book, Allegiant, by Veronica Roth, which flopped so badly ($179.2 million) that it never saw its eventual conclusion on the big screen.

Musicals have always proven to be a rags-to-riches genre at the box office, and when it came to the ambitious task of Bad in two parts, director Jon M. Chu says, “It was also the obvious thing to do, because every time we tried to make it into one movie, you had to take songs out of it.”

“When we land on (the song) ‘Defying Gravity,’ we have to film backwards from ‘Defying Gravity,’” the director says of splitting the musical in half.

That plan is already proving to be a success Bad will open to $120 million at the domestic box office this weekend, breaking the record for a film based on a Broadway show and far surpassing the previous big opener, 2014 In the forest (opening value $31 million).

Talk about a die-hard fan of the original musical. Chu, the Crazy rich Asians filmmaker, didn’t just see the show on Broadway. He saw the musical being tuned in San Francisco decades ago.

By taking the film from stage to screen, he explains that “the audience in a theater is in a completely different place than in a cinema.”

During the pandemic lockdown, Chu huddled Bad stage and film producer Marc Platt, screenwriter Dana Fox and the original Bad music and lyric legend Stephen Schwartz and playwright Winnie Holzman. Together, “they walked me through every script they ever did for this movie and the original show and every line of why it was written that way, what scenes were cut, why the lyrics are the way they are, what alternate lyrics are there. were,” he said. “I was given a theater kid’s dream to understand it.”

Delving into the mythology of the source material was an awakening for Chu, as there were story elements the show could get away with without explanation. However, the filmmaker knew he owed moviegoers a bigger explanation, as in, “What does it mean to defy gravity?” Does Elphaba power the broomstick or pull her?

And when it came to removing darlings from the original show, Chu had a sacred rule guiding him. ‘It’s the girls, stupid. That’s what people fell in love with. Yes, that’s it Wizard of Oz and that means a lot to a lot of people. There’s a kind of political aspect to it. There is a social part and a cultural side to it. But at the end of the day, it’s these girls. And so that’s what I really focused on.”

We also ask Chu when we can get the Crazy rich Asians follow-up. He says firmly, “I’m not bringing everyone back unless it’s worth it,” he replied. “There is too much at stake for everyone.”

You can listen to our Crew Call chat with Chu below: