TheWickedmovie that we got could have looked very different if the development process for the now-iconic novel-turned-Broadway-musical-turned-movie had gone in one of the many varied directions it nearly did. In fact, theWickedmovie almost wasn’t a musical, and nearly attached big names likeDemi MooreandWhoopi Goldberg, as well as directorRobert Zemeckis.
In a new interview withVanity Fair, producerMarc Platt—who has been involved with the project since its very early days—revealed some of the most surprising and interesting ways in which the film almost came-to-be since the Gregory Macguire novel’s release in 1995.
Who Else Was Nearly Involved in the ‘Wicked’ Movie?
“I am going to try and get the timeline right if I can remember, but I believe when I became the president of production at Universal, the project was already here,” Platt explained. “It had been optioned initially by Demi Moore’s company.”
But she wasn’t the only one. According to Macguire, “people who had expressed an interest in the first six months included Whoopi Goldberg and Claire Danes. Salma Hayek had some interest, and Laurie Metcalf.” It was Moore, however, whom Macguire was most excited about. As he put it, “I used to say, I can imagine Demi Moore naked and green on the cover ofVanity Fair,” a nod to her iconic photoshoot with the magazine.
As the film’s development as a straight drama continued, no one involved seemed all that excited about what was happening. “I saw a couple of screenplays, and I confess with all high regard to people who write screenplays—and that’s not me—I didn’t care for them much,” Maguire says.
‘Wicked’s Broadway Cameos Were Nearly Very Different, Reveals Director
Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth almost had very different cameos in the ‘Wicked’ movie, explains director John M. Chu.
Enter: composer Stephen Schwartz, who heard about the book from a friend and became determined to turn the story into a musical—even though many people were against it, particularly in the late ’90s, when Hollywood movie musicals were considered an impossible, out-of-fashion sell.
But Schwartz was convincing enough that Platt eventually agreed, too. As theVFpiece puts it:
Schwartz was still adamant about making a musical out of Maguire’s book, and reached out to Platt to see what was possible. “My pitch to him was stage musical, and then, if it works, adapt the stage musical as a film,” Schwartz says.
“[Platt] didn’t, in that first meeting, say, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re absolutely right. I’ll do that.’ It took a while,” the composer adds. “I think he was waiting on the second draft of the screenplay, and he wanted obviously to consider what we talked about. But I went into that meeting pretty hopeless. I thought, ‘There’s just no way that the head of a movie studio, where the studio has already been spending money on screenplays and is thinking of doing this [as a drama], is going to change course. But I want this so badly, I’m going to give it a shot.’ And I just was extremely lucky that it happened to be Marc Platt.”
“That led up to me deciding, ‘I’m going to take a left turn andnotdevelop it initially as a film,'” Platt says, allowing Schwartz and eventual writer Winnie Holzman (who penned both the muscial and the movies’ scripts) to take it to the stage first. “I always thought it was a film, both because it’s inThe Wizard of Oztradition and also because it’s a world to build and immerse yourself in, which lends itself to cinematic treatment.“That said, Platt is glad he took the route of waiting and letting it become a musical, which made the movie even more possible than it had been prior. If it weren’t for the wild success of the Broadway musical, we may not have ended up with the Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo starring juggernautvoted the best movie of 2024that we have today. Which just goes to show you: it’s all about following the yellow brick road where its meant to go.
Wicked adapts the Broadway musical into a two-part film, following the unlikely friendship between Elphaba, born with green skin, and Glinda, a popular aristocrat, in the Land of Oz. As they navigate their contrasting paths, they evolve into Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
