Wicked Tulips
I'm in an Oscar movie club. Every year I, and my movie friends, watch all of the nominated films and pick our favorites for the awards. (There's a spreadsheet.) I'm not sure how the Oscar categories are selected but Best Use of Flowers gets my support for a new award. This year Wicked would run away with that category. (Minor spoilers ahead.)
Though I haven't seen the movie yet, I did read the book and saw a production of the musical. I love the story. It's a prequel to the classic Wizard of Oz focusing on the origin of The Wicked Witch of the West. The director of the movie, Jon M. Chu, created a backstory for the munchkins. They are tulip farmers! He, and production designer, Nathan Crowley, really wanted Munchkinland to be “wonderous and colorful.” They decided to film with real tulips instead of practical fakes or CGI.
As movie makers they knew they needed some flower farming expertise and hired Mark Eves of Belmont Nurseries in Norfolk, England. At first, the film producers estimated they needed a million tulips for the Munchkinland set! When Mark said it would take nine million to achieve their vision, they didn't blink. Even nine million bulbs at four cents each was just a quarter of one percent of the movie's $145 million budget. In fact, the cost of real flowers was comparable to CGI flowers. But, there was also risk.
Nathan Crowley, in an interview with Architectural Digest, discussed his preference for practical filmmaking. Although Wicked was not his first foray into farming for film (he grew over 500 acres of corn for Interstellar) he quickly learned of the details of tulip growing. Based on the interview it sounded like they bought baby bulbs from The Netherlands and topped the first harvest in England. Those blooms were used to decorate the buildings of Munchkinland. The second, stronger bloom was later filmed for external landscape scenes. The production team also needed to contend with an asynchronous blooming schedule. Crowley called it “an adventure.”
On the day of the movie premiered Belmont's IG revealed "we have been keeping a very big secret for a while now... We are proud to share that we were the hosts of Munchkinland for the new Wicked film that has been released today." Wow! Very exciting. The bulbs are remaining in the ground and the location will be open next season for visitors. Add another entry to my flower destination bucket list.
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