WIRED Roundup: Making Art In the AI Era, With Wicked’s Jon. M Chu

0:00Jon M. Chu:This spring, the Chicago Independent Venue League presents Civil Fest 2026, a celebration of live music and community events across Chicago's independent stages. From April 16th through 25th, experience concerts and special events at venues like Metro, Salt Shed, Talia Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, The Auditorium, Ramova Theater, Beat Kitchen, Chop Shop, and dozens more. From intimate clubs to legendary rooms, all spotlighting the artists and spaces that define our city. Learn more at civlchicago.com. Civil Fest 2026. Your city, your venues, your festival. Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley.

0:46Jon M. Chu:I'm Zoe Schiffer, Wired's Director of Business and Industry. Today on the show, we want to share with you one of the best conversations that happened during our big interview event in San Francisco last week. Our senior culture editor, Manisha Krishnan, sat down with John Chu, the director of Wicked, to discuss what made the film franchise such a success. Even if you're not a fan of musicals, it's a fascinating conversation about the power of viral marketing and how forward-looking filmmakers like Choo are trying to navigate the AI era without compromising their creative vision and their execution.

1:20Jon M. Chu:Here's that conversation.

1:31Jon M. Chu:Hi, everyone.

1:33Manisha Krishnan:Hey, everybody.

1:34Jon M. Chu:John, thank you so much for being here.

1:35Manisha Krishnan:Of course. Great to be.

1:36Jon M. Chu:Unless you're a Luddite, which I doubt anyone here would be here if they were, you've probably heard of John and, of course, the wonderful world of Wicked. Wicked was the highest grossing adaptation of a Broadway musical in box office history. It was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Wicked for Good, which is in theaters right now, opened number one at the global box office. John also directed the wildly successful phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians, which I love. And you are slated to direct the upcoming Britney Spears biopic based on her memoir, The Woman and Me. So we have tons to talk about.

2:10Jon M. Chu:Let's dive in. Okay, you worked on Wicked for five years. And this moment right now is kind of the culmination of that. Are you relishing this? Are you feeling like you want to be done with Wicked? Like, how is this moment going for you?

2:25Manisha Krishnan:Yeah, well, one, it's really great to be in the Bay. I'm a Bay Area kid. That's right. I grew up in Los Altos. My parents have a Chinese restaurant there for 56 years, Chef Chew's. And so this is my home. It's good to be home. And I was built by the generosity of this place. The customers who would come into the restaurant would give my parents computers, video cards. This is in the mid-90s. And software. Adobe would give me software with Russell Brown. all this stuff for this little, this kid who was getting into movies. And so I feel a great responsibility when I'm out in, went to LA to escape this place.

3:08Manisha Krishnan:And now we're all crashing together. And so when I started Wicked five plus years ago, I actually saw Wicked for the first time in the current theater here before it went on Broadway. And so, you know, The Wizard of Oz is the great American dream. It's what my parents who immigrated to this country into the Bay dreamed of and they started their business and they built this world for us. And we believe in the, I'm one of five kids and I believed in this dream and I got to pursue it. And so tackling Wicked, which is taking the great American fairy tale and then deconstructing it in a new way and picking up its pieces and trying to tell a new story through a new perspective that has always been really important to me because that's, that's, that's me.

3:50Manisha Krishnan:That's how I grew up. And yes, Yes, I am exhausted after these five plus years. I've had three children since working on this movie. But how privileged are we to be exhausted by the dream that we begged from the universe for so many times? So I feel honored to be honored.

4:07Jon M. Chu:Wicked is hugely successful, both critically and commercially. The press results seem larger than life. The outfits, the brand collabs, the viral moments. It seems like it takes a lot more these days to sort of make a true box office hit. I mean, even Leo DiCaprio was working the podcast circuit to promote one battle after another. So like how key are sort of influencers, podcasters, like platforms to getting butts into movie theaters?

4:34Manisha Krishnan:I mean, I don't know what the data is, but obviously it's a huge piece of the puzzle now. And I've watched that change even from Crazy Rich Asians to now. It's such a different landscape. Do you go on late night talk shows, daytime talk shows, or you get on these podcasts? and everything's in 15 second, 20 second clips. And that seems to be what people want. Because I grew up in the Silicon Valley, technology has always been, it allowed me to do what I do. It gave me access before someone my age should have had access to it. And I learned a lot during that. And so my first movie, Step Up to the Streets, was a sequel to a dance movie.

5:13Manisha Krishnan:But what I learned when I started that, this is in 2008, the first Step Up movie had this huge following on MySpace. And yes, I was on Friendster and all that stuff. But MySpace was the first time I entered a movie and they're like, hey, you have to actually get onto MySpace and understand this audience because it's more about international box office. So the music was shared, the album was huge because it was a dance movie. And so I got to go on that space and got to meet, as I was directing the movie, got to meet those people. I I got to have auditions on MySpace and share our new music on MySpace and understand why they love.

5:51Manisha Krishnan:So to me, it really influenced the making of the movie. And when we released it, we even took people that auditioned and put them in the movie, got them premiere tickets. And so it was this great relationship. My movies after that was Justin Bieber, Never Say Never, which I got to be when Justin was 14 years old and he was just bursting onto the scene. I was on Twitter. Of course, he was dominating Twitter at that moment, but he was still just on the rise. And so I got to witness that. I got to witness him when he was like, hey, you're going to direct this movie, but we have to introduce you to my audience.

6:22Manisha Krishnan:I realized, oh, the story is being told before the movie even begins, before you even start shooting. And then after you're done with the movie, you got to continue that story. And so for that, he brought me into his trailer. He's like, let's record something. He's like, hey, everybody, this guy keeps following around. Who are you? And it turns to me. I'm like, hey, I'm John. I'm going to be directing your movie. And here we go. And so at some point, I watched in real time, my followers go up. I mean, it was like 10 ,000 every five minutes. It was, I've never seen it like that. I recorded on my iPhone.

6:54Manisha Krishnan:It was insane. And it was just, so I saw his power in that. And he kept me in. So I became a character in his world for a moment in time as he was traveling. And I just saw the power of that. Getting to know, talking to his fans on tiny chat, learning about, telling them when we're flying a helicopter over Madison Square Garden and say, hey, give me your cross, as you're going, everybody wear purple to the concert. Tell me your cross streets. I'm going to fly. I'm going to do flybys. And then we get up there and we're doing flybys from fans who've tweeted, and this is 2012, where their location is.

7:29Manisha Krishnan:I mean, that kind, or saying, hey, you're going to the movie this weekend, bring glow sticks. Oh, and tell the guy in the sound side of your, whatever theater you're turn it to a seven because they always turn it to a four. And they got, theaters complained to us because all these kids were going to the projectionist, turn it to a seven. And that was enormously powerful. And I think now it's, you know, it's matured in different ways. It's now just a part of the business, but I, but Wicked is no different than that. Wicked, they have, you have the Wizard of Oz fans, which is of a different generation.

8:01Manisha Krishnan:You have the Wicked book fans, which are of a different group sort of than the Wicked musical fans. And those are hardcore theater kid fans, which I'm a part of. And then you have movie people, and then you have musical people just in general. And then they're all giving you input of who you hire, how you're doing this movie. And so I tried to keep them in the loop of how we were doing. And then by now, it's, okay, we're coming out. Let me present you to what we've done. And here are these girls and what they've done. And that's been actually really fun and hard all at once, I guess.

8:37Jon M. Chu:Well, I mean, I am curious about sort of the viral moments from the Wicked Press Store, because obviously Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo's friendship has sparked a lot of conversation. They've been emotional in certain interviews together. This has even spawned parodies on TikTok. One thing I'm wondering is, okay, what the hell did you do to them in this movie? No, I'm kidding. But is there something about this movie that really bonded you all? Where where do you think that emotion is coming from? And what do you make of sort of like the fixation on that and like the virality of like those moments, that scrutiny?

9:12Yeah.

9:13Manisha Krishnan:Imagine little me getting the call. Hey, you get to do wicked. Oh my gosh. Okay. And they announced me and everyone's like, that guy who did step up to the streets. Fuck you. That's the energy coming at you. My mom's like, don't listen to them, honey. I'm like, I can't stop listening to them. So imagine that. Then you're like, hey, we're going to, I'm looking at the material. I'm like, you can't do one movie. You have to do two movies because if you do one movie, you strip out all the things that's not wicked anymore. And I'm a wicked fan. I want this to be the definitive wicked. And otherwise it's not wicked.

9:45Manisha Krishnan:So you split the movie in two and studios like, John, you announce it to the world. So then I tweet it like, fuck you, John, two movies, you money grabber. So you're getting that kind of energy on you. And then everyone wants to be Elphaba and Glinda. Everyone's sending you their videos of why they should be Elphaba and Glinda. Everyone's sending you their favorite celebrities why they should be Elphaba and Galinda. And you're just trying to like make a great movie and that takes focus and clarity. And then you start doing auditions and then you start choosing who it's going to be. And then you choose Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, which seems obvious now.

10:17Manisha Krishnan:But at the time, everyone's like, Cynthia Erivo, what? How, I mean, she could sing the song, but how could she be this? Oh, Ariana Grande, that's a money grab, the blah, blah, blah. I know the truth because I was there in the audition room. I saw how amazing that when you see Ariana Grande do this role, you would be shocked because she's opening up a new chapter to her life. I knew that. And I'm seeing Cynthia Erivo doing things, even though she's known around the world, we were going to make her a global superstar because we were going to expose her to more people. And the way she sings Elphaba songs, even though we've heard it a hundred times, when she says something has changed within me, something's not the same.

10:55Manisha Krishnan:That felt so resonant to me. this was during COVID lockdown when we were doing auditions. I was like, that's where we are in culture right now. And so I had to choose that. And now everyone's attacking me, attacking me. And all the Wizard of Oz people are like, you can't do Wicked. What are you going to do with Dorothy? Blah, blah, blah. And then you're in London and you're together and you're like, people aren't going to see this movie for three, maybe plus years. So we have to make the best movie we can. And all our career is on the line. And knives are out. And theater kids are tough.

11:22Jon M. Chu:Yeah.

11:23Manisha Krishnan:And fans are tough. And by the way, everyone says cinema is dead. And by the way, they think movie musicals are dead. Let's start. Oh, and let's spend so much money on two movies that if the first one doesn't work, you're literally screwed. And then so we look at each other, we're like, we only have each other. We only have each other. I think I have some solutions, but we're going to have to find this together. You become very, very bonded. They're my sisters. and if people think that's cringy, then they've never made something with love. Then they've never made, you know, you know how hard late nights, all night long, drawing pictures, trying to figure it out, having that fear just outside your door and continuing through that, that is hard stuff.

12:10Manisha Krishnan:And when you have a group that you're like, okay, block it all out. Let's walk this yellow brick road together and you're creating, you're doing things and you're taking risks and you're playing and I'm going to protect them because if I mess, I could kill their career too in the edit, in the mix. And so we're doing this with so much passion. And then people haven't even seen, and we do two movies at the same time. We shoot both. So we've seen the fun part of the story and the dark side of the story. We've seen them bond together, be together, and then we've seen their death and their rebirth as they leave each other.

12:42Manisha Krishnan:So we've lived a lifetime with these people before anyone even knows when this movie is coming out. And then we drop the movie and we're doing press tours. And we are so close together because we've been in this huddle and we're talking about, and they're only seeing the first movie, which is fun and all that. And, you know, it's, it's heroic and it's all these things, but we lived their death already. So we're, we're expressing those things. And it's hard, I think, for people to fully understand that the intensity of that. But I think because you know how intense it is to create anything of substantial effort, that that is what it requires.

13:14Manisha Krishnan:And we're living in a time of so much cynicism and everyone having a microphone to cut and blame. And so it's an interesting role as a director, as a storyteller. What does the audience want from me? Do they just want the project out there? Are they begging and itching at all the behind the scenes stuff? And it's an interesting balance. I'm still trying to find, you know, Chris Nolan just does it. this movie and does this thing and whether that can sustain itself or James Cameron's getting out there and doing podcasts now too. Quentin Tarantino's getting on that microphone. So how much do we want to hear from the filmmaker or do I love the work speaking for itself?

13:48Manisha Krishnan:But there is a piece of me that also needs to speak about the work itself. So people understand what's been going into this. And so I think that that's, that's the dance that we're doing.

13:57Jon M. Chu:And, um, that was a good answer. Sorry, that's a long thing. That's better than what I thought you were going to tell me.

14:01Manisha Krishnan:But that's what I struggle with every day. I am a person of the internet. I get information. I feed off of it. I love knowing that. It's my meta universe over here. But now I have kids and I have my also real universe here. And so that separation, when you have kids, at least that I'm finding, I have five kids now. It's the best, though. It's the best. I have an eight-year-old, six-year-old, four-year-old, two-year-old, and one-year-old. and some say, wow, that's so exhausting, but actually like spurs creativity. If you have, you have kids, especially young kids, you know, it like makes you alive.

14:37Manisha Krishnan:And so I, I struggle with how much to engage. I want to engage with that world because I feel like it is, it is, it exists and you have to engage with it if you want to help guide it in some way. And you want to be the

14:51Jon M. Chu:defender of good and kindness. One thing I'm wondering about, cause you, you grew up in Silicon Valley, so obviously not scared of tech. There's a lot of contention over using AI in the creative process. Guillermo del Toro said he would rather die before he uses it. To what extent do you think it could be useful for your filmmaking process?

15:11Manisha Krishnan:Well, I mean, I think that AI is such a general term. It's hard to have arguments about AI because you're like, what are you talking about AI? Are you talking about generative AI? Are you talking about AI, the technology of, is autocorrect a type of AI? Yeah, that's fair. Is the algorithm AI? Yeah. I mean, it all, to me, I just don't, the marketing term of AI is just so confusing when I have a conversation about it. If we're talking about AI as a technology of information and organization and even visual organization or understanding, to me, that's so fascinating.

15:48Jon M. Chu:Right.

15:48Manisha Krishnan:And I love that. And Wicked was sort of pre-AI because we were already way down the road. But I like to play with AI because I want to understand it. I'm not scared of technology. Like you said, I think humans choose what we value and we're going to choose the thing that is not the easiest thing ultimately. It may be great to see at first, you know, when DSLRs came out and you're like, wow, that looks like a real, sort of a real camera. And suddenly everyone's a photographer. And then you see all these pictures and they all look the same. And you're like, oh, what it looks like isn't actually what a real photographer is.

16:20Manisha Krishnan:What does it mean? What are you trying to say? And so our values shift. And so when it comes to gender of AI, I think there was an original sin that it's hard for people to get over, this mining of images and stories that we never agreed on. And the rights holders never stepped that legal game up to defend it. And so it feels like everyone's like, hey, we're past that point, guys. We're sorry about that. We know you had those terms that everybody clicked on and we mined those. And sorry, but this technology is more important than that. So I think that as an artist, that's a hard thing to get over.