James Cameron might be deep in Pandora these days, but the filmmaker revealed he once came surprisingly close to taking a trip down the Yellow Brick Road.
During a recent appearance on The Town with Matt Belloni podcast, the Avatar director opened up about nearly tackling the movie adaptation of Wicked long before Universal’s current two-part film landed in production.
In the conversation, Cameron talked about how the industry has shifted and why only certain films get massive theatrical budgets now. That led him to admit that he once circled Wicked as a potential project.
“The kind of movies that I like to watch, let’s say Dune or even Wicked,” he said. “I almost made Wicked back when. I really love the story, I mean The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite [movies]. This is going back 15 years.”
Cameron confirmed that he sat down with Universal Pictures about bringing Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and the smash 2003 Broadway musical to the screen. As he put it, he just couldn’t crack a key creative piece.
“I couldn’t find the song,” he admitted, though he also made it clear he was not dismissing the idea of directing a musical entirely. “I don’t know,” Cameron added. “Well, my favorite movie is a musical, Wizard of Oz.”
Before the Broadway version became a phenomenon, Wicked had several big names vying for a shot at adapting it. Whoopi Goldberg was among the actresses who pushed to get the story made, with other contenders including Demi Moore, Claire Danes, Salma Hayek, Laurie Metcalf, Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Thompson and Nicole Kidman.
Eventually the tale found its home onstage as a Tony winning musical created by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman and led by Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda.
Universal’s modern film adaptation, based on both the musical and Maguire’s book, finally brings the saga to the big screen across two movies. The second installment, Wicked: For Good, directed by Jon M. Chu, continues the journey of Elphaba and Glinda years after their time at Shiz University.
Cynthia Erivo reprises her role as Elphaba with Ariana Grande as Glinda and Jeff Goldblum stepping in as the Wizard of Oz.
Cameron diving into the world of Oz would have been really interesting to see, especially with his flair for large scale fantasy.
