Opera roles by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Sing-along songs (“Popular!” “Defying Gravity!”) for fans of the stage-to-screen adaptation. Tour-de-force leadership through Crazy rich AsiansJon M. Chu. Choose your pleasure: the movie Bad has something for everyone.

But for design fans the real star of the fast-growing blockbuster Bad are the dazzling sets. With a reported budget of $150 million, no expense was spared in conjuring up visual backdrops from Munchkinland to the Emerald City.

“I’ve made a lot of really big films,” says production director Nathan Crowley, a Brit who also worked on the project Interstellar And The Dark Knightand who created the sets on three huge backlots in the English countryside. “But this was by far the biggest movie I’ve ever made in my life.”

Based on author Gregory Maguire’s revisionist retelling of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Bad– which was first adapted from a book into a long-running Broadway musical – attempts to bring a sense of humanity (and a backstory) to one of the greatest villains in storybook history: the Wicked Witch of the West. When adapting the story, Crowley looked to classic Americana – from the endless fields and skies of the Great Plains, which inspired the landscape around Oz, to the modernist architecture of Chicago, the catalyst for the awe-inspiring Emerald City. “It’s an American fairy tale,” says Crowley, who studied architecture before turning to film design.

The designer says Chu, the director, set the bar for the film’s visuals. “He wanted it to be wonderful, magical and colorful,” he says. “He doesn’t tell you what it should look like, he just makes you push and push it to the edge of insanity. And I love that he doubles down like that.”

Here, the designer gives a glimpse into how he created the film’s breathtaking sets.

Munchkinland

The film opens with Munchkinland – “a vibrant tapestry woven of sunshine and tulips,” as Crowley describes it. He built it on a 6.8 hectare plot in the British countryside. The camera moves over the fields where a rainbow of tulips have been planted – nine million in total, grown for production by a local flower farmer – and then arrives at a village with a Middle-Earth atmosphere. Here, the Munchkins, including Bok Woodsman (Ethan Slater), the character in love with his heart on Grande’s Glinda, joyfully celebrate the death of the evil witch. That is, before the film goes back in time to reveal how the witch – once a misunderstood green-skinned child named Elphaba – grew up to be so terrifying.

Crowley designed the village around a group of stucco houses with green-covered roofs in the shape of witches’ hats. The Munchkins are farmers who grow tulips for colorful dyes. “The central village is a living kaleidoscope, houses painted in opulent hues and doors adorned with intricate tulip carvings,” says the designer. “The market square is overflowing with rolls of dyed fabric, skeins of yarn and perhaps even tulip-infused treats. It’s a celebration of color!”

Shiz University

Part Venetian palazzo, part Hogwarts, and part Harvard, Wicked’s Shiz University is where the best students in Oz, including witches-in-training Elphaba and Glinda, go for their magical education. Here they hone their skills in wizardry and learn cutting-edge science from professors like Dr. Dillamond, a wise but persecuted goat played by Peter Dinklage. “Shiz was one of my favorite sets,” says Crowley. “It was huge.”

Since Oz existed before animals were subjugated to humans, there was no such thing as a horse-drawn carriage. Students entered Shiz by boat, creating a need for a water entrance with functional docks. A huge archway leads to a Gothic-style building built around a courtyard. This was inspired by the monumental arch designs for Chicago’s neoclassical White City, built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

A highlight is the Shiz Library, a vaulted space with a spectacular Fred Astaire-esque dance scene. “Dancing Through Life,” with Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). “We came up with a design with giant, rotating bookshelves,” says Crowley.

The Emerald City Express

Since the story revolves around transporting Elphaba and Glinda from Shiz to the Emerald City in “One Short Day,” the designers had to come up with a suitable transportation option – one that suited the wizard’s talent for advanced technology. The solution was a train that does not run on steam, but on clockwork. “I have always been fascinated by the intricate, beautiful mechanical figures (automata) that were built during the reign of Louis XV,” says Crowley. He was also inspired by the mechanical orange tree of illusionist and watchmaker Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin.

The resulting 100-foot train is a real locomotive moving across a barley-planted field, echoing the American heartland. “It’s reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings, or the film Days of heaven‘ he adds. ‘If you look at American westerns, they are usually cities or large, flat landscapes. It’s the Americana of everything.”

The Emerald City

A home for a wizard must be awe-inspiring and Oz’s Emerald City is exactly that and more. Here too, Crowley was inspired by Chicago’s White City. The result combines neoclassical architecture with the flourishing of Art Nouveau. “This wasn’t a single city,” he says. “This was Oz, a land of fantastic whimsy… a dream conjured by a mighty wizard. It was to rise from the landscape like a unique emerald jewel, a profile etched in the memory of every Ozian, a myth they whispered Desire. Tricky thing indeed!”

The exterior was digitally designed with CGI. “Detailed illustrations were of the utmost importance, capturing every curve and emerald facet of this fantastic metropolis,” he says. This was merged with a built-up area with structures almost 45 feet high. The “Wizamania” stage culminates in a dance scene orchestrated around a huge fountain that is “blooming wonders, rotating and unfolding like a giant flower.”

The Wizard’s Palace

When Elphaba and Glinda enter the Great Hall of the Wizard’s Palace, they walk through a towering space full of translucent green towers and enormous circular windows. Much of this was built for the film. “We have to give the actors enough of a set to help them get into character,” says Crowley. ‘They must have felt intimidated at the Great Hall. They’re going to meet the Wizard. I should feel scary. And then you go into the throne room and there’s a giant mechanical head. It is a mechanical automaton six meters high. built with hydraulics and it moves and comes through the curtains. And there is a puppeteer who moves the head. It’s fantastic to see it come to life.

You might also like it

• From the archive: Visit Sarah Jessica Parker’s relaxing Hamptons Retreat

• 75 small (but mighty) kitchens to steal instant inspiration