Jon M. Chu, the celebrated director of “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good,” was unquestionably direct on Thursday when he offered words of wisdom to an arena full of design enthusiasts at the annual Canva Create fan gathering held at the the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, Calif.
“Creativity is hard,” Chu told the crowd who gathered for the daylong celebrate of the online design and publishing platform that has grown exponentially from its roots as an Australian startup a little over a decade ago. “Our job is to make it look easy — like it just happens. And we know it didn’t just happen,” Chu said during his keynote conversation with Jimmy Knowles, who is global head of experiential for Canva.
Chu and Knowles spoke at length about the power of storytelling and visual communication to reach consumers, build businesses and also to move culture forward. However, Chu warned that storytelling can’t be heavy-handed or feel like homework for the audience.
“As an entertainer our job is to not force anything. Our No. 1 job is to entertain,” Chu said. “You cannot unlock someone unless you [pique] their curiousity and make them want to know more.”
Chu offered a glimpse behind the scenes of 2024’s “Wicked” and 2025’s “Wicked: For Good” in describing the process of adapting the beloved stage musical for the big screen. The adaptation of a beloved work necessarily requires give and take.
Stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo improvised one of the most touching moments of the film, near the end of “Wicked: For Good,” when Grande’s Glinda and Erivo’s Elphaba part for the last time while each is closing a door behind them. The two whisper ‘I love you’ as they shut their doors.
Getting that scene in the film was a conversation with “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz and original musical book writer Winnie Holzman, Chu disclosed. Schwartz and Holzman initially felt ‘I love you’ was too much of a human emotion for the characters to express in the tuner’s other-worldly environment of Oz. But Chu was so impressed by what the cameras captured after he said “cut” one day that he fought for the scene’s inclusion in “Wicked: For Good.”
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“The girls made up this moment. It affected me so deeply that I was like, ‘We need to put that in,’ ” Chu said.
Chu, also known for helming the groundbreaking 2018 comedy “Crazy Rich Asians,” said the key for him in leading the collaborative process of making a feature film is to stay focused on the end goal of getting to the finish line.
When production on a movie or TV project has commenced, “I am laser-focused — get it made, get it made,” Chu said. He feels that’s his ultimate job as a multihyphenate writer/director/producer. “It’s the best job in the world to be able to fight through that.”
At Knowles’ prompting, Chu confirmd that he is working on a stage musical adaptation of “Crazy Rich Asians” that is in active rehearsals. (Chu noted that he skipped a day of rehearsals in New York to participate in Canva Creates.)
Chu cautioned the audience that success in creative industries such as Hollywood has to be earned through hard work, expertise and talent.
“The world owes you nothing. You do not have ‘a right’ to tell a story that people like or accept or watch,” Chu said. But in the same breath, creativity can be a great leveler, Chu emphasized.
“Dream bigger than you ever think you could,” he said in closing.
Earlier in the day, Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams hosted a colorful kickoff session to Canva Create that highlighted the big leaps forward that the platform has taken over the past year amid the fast evolution of generative AI tech and tools.
Perkins, who is CEO of Canva, addressed head-on the concerns among many who work in creative industries about the potential for AI to supplant human labor. She cast an optimistic light on AI’s potential to be harnessed for positive uses.
“We are excited to get Canva AI into your hands and to see what you feel about it,” Perkins said. “There is a lot of discussion about AI right now. Some say it will replace human thinking and creativity, but our hope is quite the opposite. We believe that AI can amplify human thinking and creativity. Technology has always been defined by the people who use it. There are choices we can make with the products we choose to build and how we choose to use them. We can choose to uplift people and solve humanity’s greatest challenges. We can choose to educate every child and unlock our true potential. And if millions of people around the world choose to turn their ideas into reality, to brighten someone’s day, to strengthen communities, to empower students, to build businesses that truly care — that will shape our future.”
From Variety US