The director of Wicked fears fans are not getting the full experience because cinemas are keeping the sound down.
The film tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch, exploring their backstory before the events of The Wizard of Oz. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo bring the iconic stage show to the big screen – but there’s a problem.
Jon M. Chu has insisted cinemas need to turn up the volume for screenings to allow audiences to watch the film as it was “intended”. The director has revealed a lot of movie theatres aren’t cranking the levels up sufficiently and he’s urged audiences to take matters into their own hands and ask for the volume to be increased when they go to see his new movie-musical.
In a post on X – formerly known as Twitter – he told fans they are not seeing film as he wanted. He complained: “Tell your movie theater to turn it up to a 7… I’ve gone to a couple screenings and they are more like a 6.4. If you want it the way it was intended 7 is the way.”
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The film’s co-writer Dana Fox replied the post and agreed with Jon, writing: “We turned it up a clock tick at our screening and it was perfect!!” Audiovisual company Dolby joined the sound conversation and chimed in: “We’ve got you covered”.
The big screen adaptation of the hit musical stars Ariana and Cynthia and the movie’s sound designer John Marquis recently revealed the pair pulled off some incredible vocal performances when recording the sons. He told The Ankler: “A lot of it did itself, just due to the nature of the way the tracks were recorded.
“You know, you get Cynthia and Ari, and it’s track after track, take after take, of amazing vocal performances that they do live, and so the challenge with the musical, obviously, is just trying to … keep it grounded, not have it pop on and off, and like, ‘Now we’re going into the musical number’.”
It comes after Jon revealed Ariana originally auditioned to play Elphaba in Wicked before landing the part of Glinda – revealing the pop star sang songs by Cynthia Erivo’s green witch Elphaba during the audition process.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said: “We were getting mixed messages. I was like, ‘Of course she’s coming in for Glinda.’ And then my casting director was like, ‘No, I think she thinks she’s coming in for Elphaba.’ I’m like, ‘That was not the plan.’
“And they’re like, ‘Well, she prepped it.’ She was being nice to me, and I was being nice to her. We just let her do it. But in my mind I was like, ‘Why is she singing Elphaba right now?’ Maybe because she’s sung those in the past, but to me, she was always a Glinda.
“We didn’t know each other well enough to be like, ‘Alright, let’s clear up the telephone game here. We are here for Glinda. Right?’”
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