Before the musical, Demi Moore wanted to play Elphaba in a Wicked movie

Wicked is one of the biggest and best movies of 2024. It's made over half a billion dollars at the box office, surpassing Mamma Mia! to become the most successful movie ever adapted from a stage musical. Fans have been waiting for a movie version of Wicked ever since the musical hit the stage way back in 2003, so it's no surprise that people turned out to see the film.

Before that, Wicked was a book by author Gregory Maguire: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, published in 1995. The book, which reimagines the story of The Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch of the West's point of view, was a hit right from the start, and there were attempts to turn it into a more straightforward movie before composer Stephen Schwartz got ahold of it and made it a musical smash.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Maguire remembered a variety of big names interested in acquiring the rights to his book, including Whoopi Goldberg, Claire Danes and Salma Hayek, although he was unsure if they intended to play to lead role of Elphaba. The star who seemed most seriously interested was Demi Moore, who was then coming off a string of hits that included A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal and Striptease. She pursued the rights through her production company Moving Pictures. “I used to say, I can imagine Demi Moore naked and green on the cover of Vanity Fair,” Magruie quipped.

He's referring there to a famous 1991 Vanity Fair cover featuring Moore pregnant and naked. I don't know if the cover is remembered today, but it definitely made a stir at the time. There were parodies and everything.

Anyway, this straightforward Wicked movie never got to the point of casting, but names like Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Thompson and Nicole Kidman were all thrown around when it came to the role of Glinda, the future Good Witch of the North. And remember: this movie wouldn't have been a musical, so the fact that not all of these actors are known as singers wouldn't have mattered.

But in the end, Schwartz's conviction that the book should be turned into a stage musical won out. “So before I had even read the book, I was trying to get the rights — more or less, immediately," the composer remembered. "While I was trying to track them down, I learned about Demi’s production company and tried to get a meeting to talk them into not doing this movie and doing a musical instead.” That eventually worked, and the rest is history.

The Wicked movie — starring Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda — is now available to rent or buy on your streaming service of choice, so if you're still wondering what all the fuss is about, now's a great time to find out. Wicked: For Good will adapt the rest of the stage musical and come out on November 21, 2025.

I'm really happy to see Wicked succeed. That said, Maguire's book is quite different from the stage musical; there's a lot more to the plot and the tone is much darker. I wouldn't mind a more straight-forward adaptation at some point, although right now I'm happy to see the new movie go over this well.

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