Dana Fox’s work with Winnie Holzman on Wicked gives an unlikely friendship the attention it needs, and then some. We rate the care taken over the women more highly than the handling of the plot.
Fi1m perspective
In Wicked (2024), Elphaba arrives at Shiz University as her sister’s carer and is put in a room with Galinda, who is appalled. The screenplay by Dana Fox and Winnie Holzman has a useful starting point: two people who have to learn to stand each other. We warmed to the film because that enforced closeness gives Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande a friendship to build, rather than one to announce. This is where we rate Fox’s work, in the attention paid to how a relationship develops. The plotting is less dependable.
Her first produced screenplay was The Wedding Date (2005), followed by romantic comedies including What Happens in Vegas (2008) and Couples Retreat (2009). She created and ran Ben and Kate (2012–13), then wrote features including Cruella (2021) and The Lost City (2022). The Wicked films make a particular demand on that experience: the relationship must develop while an established story reaches its appointed places. Her work on them is most persuasive when the first task gets priority.
Holzman wrote the stage show’s book, and we cannot sensibly separate her contribution to these screenplays from Fox’s. Both films are directed by Jon M. Chu; his care with the songs in Wicked gives the writing something to live up to. In that film, the first half of the stage musical becomes 162 minutes of cinema, and the relationship cannot justify all that extra time.
Wicked: For Good (2025) makes the difficulty plainer. Fox and Holzman have to finish the story of the two friends and connect it to The Wizard of Oz (1939), with every hat and slipper accounted for. They manage the friendship; the connecting plot keeps interrupting it, and the songs have to compete for time in an over-long film. That is a significant limitation in writing that otherwise takes its characters seriously. Start with Wicked for the women, and be prepared to wish their writers had been firmer about the length.
Biography
Dana Fox is an American screenwriter. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English and art history in 1998 and from the University of Southern California’s Peter Stark Producing Program in 2000. She initially aimed to become a producer but turned to screenwriting after enjoying a university assignment to write a screenplay.
Fox is known for her work on romantic comedies including The Wedding Date (2005), What Happens in Vegas (2008), Couples Retreat (2009), How to Be Single (2016) and Isn't It Romantic (2019). She co-wrote the screenplay for Cruella (2021) and The Lost City (2022), and collaborated with Winnie Holzman on the screenplays for Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). She has also worked in television, creating the series Ben and Kate (2012–13).
