The long-awaited movie adaptation of the musical Wicked has finally been confirmed, with Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry at the helm.
The Broadway and West End hit is getting the big screen treatment by movie studio Universal, which has scheduled the film for release on December 20, 2019. Casting has yet to be announced.
The long-running musical is an alternative telling of the 1938 film The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the witches of the Land of Oz, in particular Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda the Good Witch, and how they came to be the characters that we know.
Based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the musical has been packing audiences to the rafters since it's debut and became one of the biggest Broadway sensations of all time with songs like Popular, For Good and, of course, The Wizard and I.
Wicked onstage in Sydney, Australia in 2009
The Broadway show was nominated for 10 Tony Awards and won three, jump-starting the careers of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth among others.
Director Daldry seems like the perfect choice to bring the musical to life on the big screen. He not only directed the stage version of Billy Eliot and the hit movie, he was also the man in the director's chair for the Oscar-winning The Reader and The Hours.
