The wonderful world of Oz comes alive once more in Wicked: For Good, the epic conclusion to last year’s first installment — a cinematic sensation that became the most successful Broadway film adaptation of all time. Jon M. Chu returns to direct a star-studded cast of new and familiar faces, including Academy Award-nominated leads Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who reprise their roles as Elphaba and Glinda. This final chapter continues to unravel the untold story of the witches of Oz, following the estranged duo as they navigate new challenges amidst the consequences of their decisions.
Demonized as The Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba now lives in exile deep within the Ozian forest as she continues her fight to expose the truth about The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). Meanwhile, Glinda has become Oz’s beloved symbol of Goodness, living a lavish life of fame and fortune in the Emerald City palace. Under the tutelage of Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), she assures the residents of Oz that they are in good hands under The Wizard’s regime. As her high-profile marriage to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) approaches, Glinda seeks to reunite with Elphaba to join forces and truly change Oz for good.
With a dazzling array of new musical numbers, dynamic environments, magical effects and complex character designs, Wicked: For Good features more than 2,700 visual effects delivered by a team of over 1,000 artists from ILM, Framestore and other studios across the globe.
The visual effects team vastly expanded the previously-established geography of the Land of Oz by crafting detailed digital forests, massive swaths of farmland and even the terrain that lies beyond its borders. Aerial photography and other real-world reference materials aided the process of creating these new environments.
Full-CG characters required extensive VFX work and nuanced facial animation, included Dr. Dillamond (voiced by Peter Dinklage), a goat employed as a history professor at Oz’s Shiz University, and Chistery (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), the leader of Elphaba’s fearsome army of flying monkeys, among many others.
Elphaba’s broom flight effects were fully redesigned to reflect her stronger command of gravity and expanded magical prowess. This included augmenting Erivo’s practical stunt work and aerial motion choreography with more precise broom animations, digital cape simulation, environmental transitions and atmospheric effects to showcase the confidence of her character.
Elaborate storm effects were required for the sequence in which Madame Morrible conjures the fateful tornado that whisks Dorothy into Oz. The supernatural spiral materializes suddenly and embarks upon its path of destruction with calculated precision, a sequence that combines grounded practical effects with layers of digital terrain, debris and wind to maximize the visceral impact.
The film’s visually dynamic musical sequences would not have been possible without VFX wizardry. “Girl in the Bubble” showcases Glinda’s iconic magical orb, which is revealed to actually be a mechanical device crafted by The Wizard. The team designed a VFX-driven mirrored environment to achieve the illusion of a continuous four-minute shot, including six mirror pass-throughs mapped out by extensive technical visualization with no motion control required.
In “No Place Like Home,” the VFX team crafted hundreds of digital animals to populate a vast forest environment, running the gamut from tiny crickets, butterflies and frogs, to large lions, tigers and bears. Each talking creature was designed to seamlessly interact with Elphaba throughout the memorable seven-minute sequence.
In “No Good Deed,” the VFX team undertook the challenge of creating an entire army of flying monkeys and extending practical sets to show the gravity-defying architecture of Kiamo Ko, Elphaba’s floating castle refuge, from stunning 360-degree perspectives.
Visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman and animation supervisor Dale Newton played vital roles in bringing both chapters of Wicked from the page to the screen, a feat of visual storytelling that required extensive technical and creative collaboration. At the 2025 View Conference, Helman and Newton shared an inside look into their work on this spectacular project.
You brought the visuals of both Wicked and Wicked: For Good to life. What were you most excited about when you signed on to such a large-scale project?
Pablo Helman: “We’ve been working on this for about four years. I think this was my first musical. For me, doing visual effects for a long time, the images were the beginning and the end. But then once I was on-set, I realized how everything comes together. It was such an emotional part of the work that we do. It’s very rare that we get to see how the music gets together with the images and basically tells a story. It’s kind of like storytelling came together for me.”
Dale Newton: “I think it being a musical was a draw. I don’t really get to work on a lot of them. I have worked on one before. It’s a bit of a love/hate thing with musicals, but when they’re done really well, they can be stupendous. And I honestly think Wicked is in that category, so we feel we’re really lucky. I think what excites me most about my work is building and creating emotional performances.
“I think working with Jon Chu is a privilege. I love collaborating, both with him and then with the animators. Just working with the team and trying to draw the best out of everybody, and trying to find that performance that makes the moment as good as it can be. Even though Dr. Dillamond is a minor character, he still plays a role. I think making that as best as we could and selling him, and therefore the rest of the film was a big challenge. It was a really big challenge.”
Pablo Helman: “Also, from working in the industry, it was the first time for me to be next to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo — just to be three feet from them. And seeing hundreds of dancers come into the middle of it. Because we were so close, we were just part of the whole movie. It’s very rare that we get that opportunity. Working with Jon Chu was great. He’s a real collaborator, somebody who asks for ideas, and he listens, and he incorporates it into the whole movie.”
How did you keep that strong sense of communication and collaboration going throughout the project?
Pablo Helman: “If you want to get into visual effects, or actually any filmmaking, I would say communication is one of the things that you need. You need to be able to communicate really quickly. You need to be able to understand and listen to other people. On Wicked, we had over a thousand artists and crew people working on the movie, so it’s really important that you’re open to listening to what other people have to say, but you’re also very focused on what needs to be done. For me, even after all these years, it’s about the people that you work with. It’s very rare that you get the project, the people and the financials together. At least in this project, the people and the project kind came together for me. So it’s a combination of things that makes something work.”
Dale Newton: “Trying to get the best understanding that I can of what Jon wants for the character — that’s my biggest job. To try and find myself in that space. I can think I’m making good choices and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m off the mark, but I think that’s the point — that you climb in there, you put your best foot forward with all of the skills that you have and contribute from your angle. So very often we’ll be pitching ideas, and sometimes Jon surprises you. He says, ‘Yeah, that’s great, I didn’t think of that.’ And sometimes, ‘Sorry guys, come back again.’ But that’s the nature of the business, and I think just being humble and putting your best foot forward all the time is all I can offer.”
Pablo Helman: “I think part of moviemaking is that it’s collaboration, but it’s also exploration, so you’re exploring things. If you weren’t exploring things, then Jon would just do one take and give it to the editor, and then the editor puts it together, and then that’s it. That’s your movie. And it doesn’t happen that way. It’s usually between 10 and 15 takes — sometimes even more. ‘Try this way. Try this other way.’ And then the editor picks it up. We try all kinds of things in visual effects and animation. So it’s about exploration.”
Were there any sequences that were particularly memorable or challenging to work on?
Pablo Helman: “Well, we had 1,800 shots. So that’s pretty much every shot in the movie, for like two hours and two minutes of work. So was there anything that was more challenging than others? No. The challenge here was start to finish.
“But I would say something like ‘No Place Like Home.’ It’s a sequence that has a lot of animals and interaction between the actors and the animals. Or something like ‘No Good Deed,’ where Elphaba becomes a witch and she faces up to the challenge. It was really a visual effects kind of challenge to put everything together, because at that point there’s a lot of asset building of the environment. There were a lot of monkeys in that last sequence.
“The beginning of the movie is always a challenge because you want to start with a bang and you want to set things up. And I think throughout the movie, also the middle is a challenge because you don’t want people to relax and not understand the base of the movie. So I think everything is a challenge. That’s why storytelling has a beginning, middle and end. You need to hit those things or else you’re not going to have storytelling.”
Dale Newton: “I have to say ‘No Place Like Home’ is the one in the film that stands out as the one I was most excited about. I think that required a lot of ingenuity to construct, and we worked a lot editorially to get the structure working early on. It’s got a lot of characters in it — as in, there are a lot of shots that have upwards of 40 characters in them — which puts a lot of strain on our workflow. There were a lot of CG enhancements.
“I think when we’re done in animation, we often then look at the work that the other departments do — the lighting and comp — and I think the result is just amazing. I look forward to sharing it with the rest of the world.”
Do you have any creative advice or inspiration that you would like to share?
Pablo Helman: “I’d say if you really want to get into visual effects, I think what you need to do is look around you. Especially visual effects that have to do with photorealism. One of the things that we look at is where the lighting is coming from. Where the shadows are. What makes a picture feel like a photorealistic thing./ oiuyt How the leaves are moving. How fast they’re moving. What happens in the atmospherics. All that kind of stuff that I’m telling you — basically you already do it because you were born with those attributes. But you need to train your eye to take a look at that. If you can do that and work with people, I’ll hire you.”
Dale Newton: “Inspire yourself. I like to be open to all of the things that I enjoy. I’ve always loved watching movies. As a kid, I didn’t necessarily have any particular idea that there were good movies or bad movies — it’s just the movies that you enjoy! In VFX, we’re making movies, so it’s really good to know and love movies, and there’s no judgment about which kinds you like. In fact, I think that’s what makes this medium so democratic, as in, there’s movies for all different kinds of people.
“I’ve always loved art. I’ve always been interested in going to visit art galleries. If you like to draw, draw every day. As Pablo said earlier, it’s about training your eye. So by looking at art, by being able to draw, looking at nature, and by loving film and knowing about it, the ins and outs of it, I think that would help to make you a well-rounded visual effects artist.”