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Nine million tulips helped give Munchkinland in 2024’s Wicked a colorful, tangible landscape—but the finished fields were not entirely practical. The production planted tulips in Norfolk, coordinated their layout and bloom with cinematography, then used visual effects to extend and adjust the landscape on screen.
Why Munchkinland was planted with tulips
Production designer Nathan Crowley said director Jon M. Chu wanted Munchkinland to feel practical, whimsical and joyous, and wanted its inhabitants to farm something. Crowley chose tulips as the crop and described the idea to The Credits: “I’m going to plant millions of tulips and give you all the colors of the rainbow.”
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The colors ranged from blue and white through red and orange. Crowley said he avoided using much green so the flowers would not compete visually with Elphaba. The planting therefore served both the story—giving the Munchkins a distinctive crop—and the film’s color design.
How the real fields were planned for filming
Crowley said the production grew nine million tulips with Norfolk farmer Mark Eves. The American Society of Cinematographers likewise reports that nine million tulips were planted in Norfolk for the Munchkinland expanses. That is a reported production figure, not an independently audited count of every flower visible in the finished film.
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The planting was planned around the camera as well as the landscape. According to the ASC, cinematographer Alice Brooks’ team asked the farmer to rotate the planting orientation by about 30 degrees to align the rows with the sun for the intended shots. Conversations with the farmer began in August 2022, and the tulips bloomed in April 2023.
Brooks described the broader approach as practical but not effects-free: “Even though the movie features visual effects, our intention was to capture as much in camera as possible and make a film that feels handmade.” The flowers gave performers and the camera a real landscape to work with; visual effects could then carry that landscape beyond what was physically planted.
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What was real and what visual effects added
The tulips were planted about 100 miles from the set, according to production visual-effects supervisor Pablo Helman of Industrial Light & Magic. He explained the distinction with the opening image of children running toward Munchkinland: “Yes, there were nine million tulips planted, but they were planted a hundred miles from the set.” In that shot, the practical field surrounds the children, while visual effects complete the landscape beyond it. The sun and lighting were also adjusted in post-production.
Helman reported 2,200 visual-effects shots for the film as a whole. That is a whole-film count, not a tally of tulip-field shots. The available production accounts do not break down each shot by how much of its flower landscape was practical or digital.
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How sunlight shaped the look of the fields
Brooks describes Glinda’s first appearance as backlit by early-morning sunlight in the Munchkinland tulip fields. She says the filmmakers used natural cues, with sunrise and sunset patterns helping shape the visual looks associated with Glinda and Elphaba. The field was therefore more than a colorful backdrop: its real flowers and changing light contributed to the image the camera captured.
What happened to the tulips after filming
Universal says the tulips and greenery from the film’s landscapes were resold to the local community. Its account does not state how many plants were resold, who bought them or the resale terms.
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- Genre: Musical
- Number of Discs: 1
- Number of Tracks: 0
- Rating: PG
- Director: Jon M. Chu
What the production accounts do not specify
The cited coverage does not identify the tulip cultivars, the planting’s total acreage, a bulb count, or the practical-to-digital split for individual shots. Those details should not be inferred from the reported nine-million-tulip figure.
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- Runtime: 138 minutes
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