Wicked: For Good (Stephen Schwartz & John Powell)

Releasing just before Thanksgiving of 2025, "Wicked: For Good" concludes the story that took the box office by storm the previous year. Adapting the second act of the smash-hit Broadway play, this film is given more leeway to expand the narrative, adding about an hour compared compared to its stage counterpart. More character moments added to allow the busy plot to breathe, including a flashback for Galinda, and seeing the Yellow Brick Road being built. Elphaba, Glinda and their former school friends must now deal with the consequences of their choices at the end of the first film, with this story taking an overall darker and more somber tone, as the characters realize their dream life or acts of rebellion won't always lead to the happy endings they envisioned. The film was once again successful at the box office, though critic and audience reaction was more mixed than the first go around. The film nevertheless delivers on the powerful performances and chemistry between the two leads, as well as enhancing the visual element, with many lavish sets, and a more varied color palette. 

Original songwriter Stephen Schwartz composed two new songs, one for Elphaba and Glinda each, songs which aren't as plot-centric, or as initially catchy, but allow us to experience emotional transformations along with the two leads. John Powell and his team also return for scoring duties, once again incorporating Schwartz's treasure trove of melodies, as well as a few of his own. The film allowed him to write more action material, as well as dealing with bigger moments fantasy and heart-break that masterfully support the song sequences as well as deliver a cohesive and rewarding journey on their own.

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I started this set early, knowing that I'd tackle it, to complete my earlier set. I kept adding to my set as more and more artwork was released, though sometimes this backfired as often full resolution artwork isn't released till after the movie's release, meaning needing to go back in and edit with higher quality sources. Frustratingly, in the age of social media, lots of artwork was still never released in proper high resolution, instead being limited to maximum sizes from apps like Instagram, which is extremely disappointing (and even when run through an AI-enhancer still don't look as sharp or detailed as they should be). I present here a total of twenty-nine covers. Although there's plenty of "Wicked" fan art created, I've so far found very little that actually works as proper alternate posters, so most of my covers presented here are officially sources, with a few commissioned pieces.

As is the case with the first film, two separate albums were released, both by Universal Studios/Republic Records, with the song album being released alongside the film, and the score album coming out two weeks later. 

Covers 1 - 12 are all sourced from official marketing artwork.

For Cover 2, the main theatrical poster, I just slid the two leads down to create a bit tighter of a composition, and re-blended as needed.

Cover 3 wasn't actually a poster (despite being the closest match the the Screen-X poster from the first film that was used for that film's score album cover), it was the cover art from Empire Magazine. I decided to lower the whole background (window and wall), allowing for better text placement at the top and more closely matching the style of the first film's pair, though this ended up taking several hours to properly matte out and blend between all the respective layers.

Cover 6 uses the first teaser poster released for the film, though in the full poster the two women are incredibly small (highlighting the "W" in the negative space). As a cover this seemed frustrating, so I chose to significantly enlarge the two of them, and blend back into the existing hills and sky.

Covers 13 - 15 present more custom creations for the film. 

Cover 13 is an illustration by Thomas Walker, commissioned as an alternate subscriber's cover for Empire Magazine. 

Cover 14 features another stunning painting by Filipino artist Denver Balbaboco (whose stunning portraits of Elphie and Glinda closed out my collection from the first movie). This painting is not directly a scene in the film, but more a possible moment after. And since, he didn't have matching pairs, I decided to match it with the double credits, for songs and score. As to editing, I moved Glinda and the bottom half of the image up, to be able to keep the images of Elphaba still prominently featured.

Cover 15 features an illustration by Tracie Ching, as a new set of posters for Mondo. I cropped out the bottom of the image, and struggled for a while on where to best place the text, and had to matte out the custom title effect, but am happy with how it turned out overall.

The remaining covers 16 - 29 offer the Elphaba/Glinda sets, for those two want cover sets for the two separate soundtrack releases, song album versus score. These all involved some degree of enhancement, paint-outs, or micro edits. Overall, the tricky thing with this film was fitting in the title logo. The first film's was hard enough to fit (with the extended "W" shape adding complications). Here the issue was compounded by having that "For Good" subtitle, meaning the title couldn't sit in the same spot, and I had to be careful what that subtitle was over, as it had to be legible, but not blocking out anything important underneath. With a subtitle like that, you're very limited, I couldn't easily have the character on top of the logo, at least not in a close-up, as it would be blocking their faces. The exception I could work out was Covers 18 and 19, where having a wider image of the women, allowed for the subtitle to float over their torsos. 

Overall I'm happy with the set, perhaps I'll update later if I find better fan creations, but for now this set is quite large enough as it is, and I hope fans of the film and the show will be pleased!