Hiding the Other Half: ‘Wicked’ Is the Latest Film to Trim ‘Part One’ From the Title

When millions around the world sit down in theaters to see Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical “Wicked” later this month, they’ll see something on the title card that can’t be found anywhere in Universal’s no-expense-spared marketing campaign: “Part I.”

The adaptation was split into two films that were shot simultaneously, but “Wicked” is the latest two-parter to downplay its open-ended nature in the marketing build-up to the film’s release. Films like “Dune,” “Fast X” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” tucked their cliffhanger endings away from trailers and promotional material. And while some audience members may have been surprised when the credits rolled, each film was a box office hit.

At a time when the box office is still trying to get back above $10 billion in North America, hiding the fact that a film comes in two parts is avoiding a potential negative. Marketing experts say they aim to focus the audience’s attention on the elements that make a theatrical film into a can’t-miss cinematic event that will excite rather than irritate them. The promise of “To Be Continued” before even seeing Part One can potentially be a turn-off, marketing execs and studio insiders told TheWrap.

“Similar to how ‘Dune’ showed off Chalamet standing in giant deserts with sand worms and spaceships, ‘Wicked’ is showing off two incredible singers in a colorful fantasy world that has to be seen on the big screen,” one marketing executive told TheWrap.

“Show them a ‘Part One,’ and they may think they’ll have to come back to theaters a second time to be satisfied. ‘Dune’ worked because it was a great film on its own and was sold as such,” this individual said.

That was the case with Universal’s decision to keep “Part One” out of the marketing for “Wicked” and instead focus on stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

For Chu’s part, the director balked at the suggestion that the two-part nature of “Wicked” was being hidden. “We made it very clear,” Chu told TheWrap. “We made plenty of statements that it’s two parts. We worked our ass off to make sure that it’s as satisfying as you can make it.”

There’s recent evidence that marketing a film as the first of two parts can be detrimental to its overall box office haul. Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One” was the first installment in the Tom Cruise series to end with a direct lead-in to the next chapter of the franchise. It was up front in all of the marketing materials that the movie would be the first half of a sizable extravaganza.

But when “Dead Reckoning, Part One” underperformed at the box office in 2023 — it grossed $220 million less than its predecessor — and “Mission: Impossible 8” was delayed to 2025 amid the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, Paramount quietly dropped the “Dead Reckoning, Part Two” title from the next movie and retroactively changed the title of the seventh film to just “Dead Reckoning.”

This past Monday, the studio released the first “M:I 8” trailer with a new title: “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.” The new name suggests the sequel’s connection to “Dead Reckoning” while dropping “Part Two” entirely.

Similarly, Kevin Costner’s epic Western “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” — the first of four planned films, two of which are shot — underperformed at the box office so significantly this summer that New Line Cinema pulled “Chapter 2” from its planned August release. The sequel remains undated.

Insiders who spoke to TheWrap point to the success of Warner Bros./New Line’s 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s “It” as the first example of a film finding box office success without selling itself as a “Part One.”

“It” adapted only the first half of King’s novel, where the evil Pennywise terrorizes a group of Maine kids until they successfully vanquish it and promise to defeat it again when it returns. The “Part One” was only revealed during the closing credits of the film, which grossed $704 million worldwide. The second half of the book would be covered in “It: Chapter Two” in 2019.

Two years after that, Warner Bros. and Legendary released Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” in theaters, with plans to similarly break up Frank Herbert’s classic novel into two films, per Villeneuve’s wishes. “I would not agree to make this adaptation of the book with one single movie,” Villeneuve told Vanity Fair in 2020. “The world is too complex. It’s a world that takes its power in details.”

According to insiders, the decision to not market “Dune” with the “Part One” addendum seen in the film’s title card was simply because Warner and Legendary had not yet greenlit a second film. The studios were waiting to see how audiences would respond to the dense sci-fi narrative. In the face of pandemic headwinds, the film grossed more than $400 million worldwide and won six Oscars. That led the studios to give the go-ahead to “Dune: Part Two,” which grossed $714 million earlier this year, and now a third film is in the works.

Unlike “Dune,” both parts of “Wicked” were greenlit simultaneously by Universal.

Chu said that the decision to split the story into two parts was the biggest and most important one he made during pre-production.

“The first thing is we need to decide if it’s one movie or two movies. I mean, that will paralyze any production,” Chu remembered telling the team in his conversation with TheWrap. “And the fact is, if you’re going to make two movies and each is going to be great on its own, then you have to commit to that. You have to then make that first movie as great and emotionally satisfying as possible. You won’t do that if you always have a back door to do one movie. You’ll never get there.”

In the end, Chu said, “we just committed to it.” Production on both films began in December 2022 and stretched over seven months, with a break during the strikes. “Part II” is scheduled to be released in December 2025.

Currently, “Wicked — Part I” is tracking for a domestic opening weekend of $85 million, which would make it the seventh film this year to earn an opening above $80 million. One of the other films on that list? “Dune — Part Two,” which opened to $82.5 million and went on to gross $282 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Umberto Gonzalez contributed to this report.

The post Hiding the Other Half: ‘Wicked’ Is the Latest Film to Trim ‘Part One’ From the Title appeared first on TheWrap.