Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Wicked, Universal’s blockbuster musical movie from director Jon M. Chu. Adapted from Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West — about the untold stories of the witches of Oz, set in the years before Dorothy dropped in via L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — the screenplay was penned by original Broadway musical book writer Winnie Holzman and Cruella co-scribe Dana Fox.
In 2003, Wicked debuted on Broadway, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, earning 10 Tony nominations including Best Musical and three wins. The musical has earned about $6 billion worldwide and has become a runaway success in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia and the UK.
The film, which opened November 22 to a slew of records after its own long journey to the screen, already has set the mark for the highest-grossing movie based on a Broadway musical in domestic box office history, grossing $335.5 million to date in the U.S. and Canada. Worldwide, it’s currently at $459 million, the second biggest all time after Mamma Mia!, and is still going strong.Wicked is the first of two planned movie chapters that follows the origin story of the witches of Oz: Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, a young woman misunderstood because of her green skin who has yet to discover her true power, and Ariana Grande as Glinda, a popular young woman gilded by privilege on a journey of self-discovery.
The two meet as students at Shiz University in the fantastical Land of Oz and forge an unlikely but profound friendship. Following an encounter with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads and their lives take very different paths. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfill their destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
On the surface, Wicked is the origin story of how Elphaba became the Wicked Witch and Galinda became Glinda the Good. But underneath is a story that swims in darker waters and mines deeper truths. Wicked is also a show about the quiet, insidious rise of a fascist movement that seeks to demonize the intelligent, speaking Animals of Oz, blame them for everything wrong in society, and destroy them by (literally) taking away their voices.
The film also stars Michelle Yeoh as Shiz University’s headmistress Madame Morrible; Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero; Ethan Slater as Boq; Marissa Bode in her feature-film debut as Nessarose, Elphaba’s favored sister; and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard.
To bring the musical to the big screen, producer Marc Platt reunited with Holzman and original composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz. “For years, Winnie and I would say, ‘For the movie, we should do this…’,” Schwartz says. “It’s been exciting us for a long time. The story of Wicked — as brilliantly imagined by Gregory Maguire and then as realized by Winnie and myself and our show collaborators — has spoken to people who have made it their own. Each of our characters is keeping a secret from the world — sometimes even a secret from themselves. That’s what the show is about: revealing what’s under the surface.”
This film adaptation, Holzman says, “was an incredible opportunity for Stephen and I to revisit this world. Coming back into it, we realized that there were aspects of the story that we wanted to explore more deeply, and with more nuance. When we got the go-ahead for two films, we knew we’d have the ability to keep everything we wanted to keep, and still expand certain key moments. We are telling the same story, while allowing it to blossom into something new.”
That story came along with help from Fox, who co-wrote Disney’s Cruella with Emma Stone, The Lost City with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, as well as the rom-coms What Happens in Vegas and The Wedding Date. She’s next up writing a global heist comedy she conceived with Simon Kinberg, that will star Ryan Reynolds; Netflix just picked it up in a seven-figure deal beating out eight bidders.
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