Wicked | 2024
- Locations |
- Hertfordshire;
- Buckinghamshire;
- East Sussex;
- Norfolk
- DIRECTOR |
- Jon M Chu
Discover where the musical Wicked was filmed, entirely in the UK – including the tulip fields and the winding river leading to 'Shiz University'.
If you've seen the movie Wicked (Part 1), you'll know not to expect loads of real locations you can visit, but there are a few glimpses of the real world, though they're mostly over by the time the credits end.
One location really worth visiting (though totally dependent on the time of year) is the vast field of tulips through which Munchkins run to celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Surprisingly, this is not entirely computer generated. That's a 20-acre spread of some nine million tulips in Norfolk.
It's Belmont Nursery in King's Lynn.
The field was first opened to the public first in 2021 to raise money for hospice charities, and partly as a way to deal with the number of people trespassing on the land for a glimpse of the blooms.
The fields are opened for the two weeks that tulips flower, which is in April and May, and the exact location is revealed only when people have bought tickets at Norfolk Tulips (remember that dogs and drones are forbidden).
The nursery was already being visited by UK fans of Yash Chopra's 1981 Hindi film Silsila, with Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha, wanting to recreate the Dekha Ek Khwab number (although the original scene was actually filmed at the Keukenhof Tulip Gardens, Lisse, in the Netherlands).
The other location you might want to visit is the delightful meandering river taking Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Nessa to 'Shiz University'.
This is the series of graceful curves on the Cuckmere River near the Seven Sisters Car Park in Cuckmere Haven, near Seaford, East Sussex. Find them south of East Dean Road, A259 at Seven Sisters Country Park.
Both 'Shiz University' and 'Munchkinland' were constructed on farmland overlooking Grand Union Canal, northeast of B488/Horton Road, north of Ivinghoe, in Buckinghamshire. The location wasn't too far from where the Void for Deadpool and Wolverine was filmed.
The spectacular indoor sets were mostly constructed at Sky Studios Elstree in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, with even more at the nearby Warner Bros Studios Leavesden, where the Harry Potter movies were filmed.
And, yes, although there's obviously enhancement, enormous practical sets were built to anchor the film in reality. The library with revolving shelves and even the giant mobile face of the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) were built for real – as was the train to the Emerald City, which alone weighed 50 tons.
