Long before Cynthia Erivo donned the green makeup, Hollywood’s highest-paid actress of the 1990s almost brought the Wicked Witch’s story to the screen – without a single song. Demi Moore has confirmed that her production company attempted to adapt Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked three decades ago, well before it became a Broadway sensation.
“So many, many years ago, we’re talking 30 years ago at least, I had a production company that was active, and we operated… and it was in development at Universal,” Moore revealed to Entertainment Tonight at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
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The project sparked a bidding war among Hollywood’s elite. “People who had expressed an interest in the first six months included Whoopi Goldberg and Claire Danes,” Maguire recalled to Variety. “Salma Hayek had had some interest, and Laurie Metcalf.” Goldberg’s publicist, Brad Cafarelli, confirmed: “This is true. Whoopi loved the book and tried hard to get the rights.”
The timing seemed perfect. Moore was one of Hollywood’s most powerful stars following hits like A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, and Striptease. Her company, Moving Pictures, had already proven successful with films like Now and Then and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
Author Maguire had envisioned Moore in the role, telling Vanity Fair, “I used to say, I can imagine Demi Moore naked and green on the cover of Vanity Fair.” The choice of Moore’s company wasn’t just about star power – it was strategic. “My agents in New York and in Hollywood recommended the Demi Moore proposal because her company had a preexisting relationship with Universal,” Maguire explained. “They said that will grease the skids on getting a potential project into production.”
Producer Suzanne Todd, Moore’s producing partner at Moving Pictures, pursued the project intensely. “At the time, there were a few people top of mind [for Glinda]: Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Thompson, Nicole Kidman,” Todd revealed. The project progressed to securing Beauty and the Beast screenwriter Linda Woolverton, who wrote what Todd called “a beautiful script.”
Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis showed interest in helming the project, though talks never progressed beyond initial conversations. However, the projected $35-$37 million budget proved too steep for a fantasy film in the late ’90s – a stark contrast to the current musical adaptation’s reported $320 million cost. “Universal was hesitant to make the move because the budget with visual effects had come in at like $35- or $37 million—which at this moment in the ’90s seemed implausible,” Todd explained.
Looking back at the project today, Moore remains philosophical about the timing. “It wasn’t necessarily right or the right time. I mean, we’re talking that long ago, but it found its right time, and that’s what’s important,” she told ET, adding that “it’s not about the attachment or the ownership” but rather “the fact that it was beautiful material and it needed to be done.”
The rights eventually remained with Universal when Moore’s production company dissolved. Producer Marc Platt would later pivot to developing it as a stage musical with composer Stephen Schwartz, who had actually tried to convince Moore’s company to make it a musical instead. “I wasn’t going in saying, ‘Oh, let me do a musical for Demi.’ I just wanted to see if I could home in on the project,” Schwartz recalled, noting that Moore had previously declined to sing her own songs as Esmeralda in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
