‘Wicked’ is the latest film to trim ‘Part One’ from the title

As millions around the world flock to theaters to watch Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical “Evil” later this month, they’ll see something on the title card that can’t be found anywhere in Universal’s free marketing campaign: “Part I.”

The adaptation was split into two films 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. Movies like “Dune,” “Fast X” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” hid their cliffhanger endings away from trailers and promotional material. And while some audiences might 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 over $10 billion in North America, avoiding hiding that a movie comes in two parts is a potential negative. Marketing experts say they aim to focus audiences’ attention on the elements that make a theatrical release a must-see cinematic event that will excite rather than annoy them. The promise of “To Be Continued” before even seeing Part One could potentially be a turn-off, marketing executives and studio insiders told TheWrap.

“Much like ‘Dune’ featured Chalamet standing in giant deserts with sandworms and spaceships, ‘Wicked’ features two incredible singers in a colorful fantasy world to be seen on the big screen,” a marketing executive told TheWrap.

“Show them a ‘Part 1,’ and they might think they’ll have to come back to the theater a second time to be satisfied. ‘Dune’ worked because it was a great movie in its own right and was sold as like that,” this person said.

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

For Chu’s part, the director rejected the suggestion that the two-part nature of “Wicked” was hidden. “We made that very clear,” Chu told TheWrap. “We made a lot of statements about it being two parts. We worked to make sure it’s as satisfying as you can make it.”

There is recent evidence that marketing a film as the first of two parts can be detrimental to its overall box office sales. 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 at the forefront of all marketing materials that the film would be the first half of a significant 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 and quietly “Dead Reckoning, Part Two” title from the next film and retroactively changed the title of the seventh film to just “Dead Reckoning.”

On Monday, the studio released the first “M:I 8” trailer with a new title: “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.” The new name hints at 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 have been shot — underperformed so significantly at the box office this summer that New Line Cinema pulled “Chapter 2” from its slate release in August. 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 achieving box office success without selling itself as a “Part One.”

“It” adapted only the first half of King’s novel, in which the evil Pennywise terrorizes a group of Maine children until they successfully defeat it and vows to defeat it again when it returns. “Part 1” 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. released and Legendary Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” in theaters with plans to similarly split Frank Herbert’s classic novel into two films, per Villeneuve’s wishes. “I wouldn’t agree to do this adaptation of the book with a single film,” Villeneuve shared Vanity Fair in 2020. “The world is too complex. It is a world that takes its power in details.”

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

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 have to decide if it’s one movie or two movies. I mean, that’s going to cripple any production,” Chu recalled telling the team in his conversation with TheWrap. “And the fact is, if you have to make two films and each of them is going to be great, then you have to commit to it. You then have to make the first movie as amazing and emotionally satisfying as possible. You don’t if you always have a backdoor to make 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 spanned 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 an $85 million domestic opening weekend, which would make it the seventh film this year to earn an opening above $80 million. One of the other movies on the list? “Dune — Part Two,” which opened to $82.5 million and went on to $282 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Umberto Gonzalez contributed to this report.

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