It’s somewhat surprising that this hasn’t happened before now. Variety reports that a movie is finally being made out of the Broadway musical Wicked.

Wicked, for those who haven’t been, takes the story of The Wizard of Oz and turns it on its head. It tells the classic story from the perspective of the Wicked Witch, who as it turns out isn’t at all evil, just horribly mistreated and misunderstood. I saw the play not long ago, and for the most part wasn’t particularly impressed. That is, except for one utterly magical, completely transcendent sequence in which the play’s Wicked Witch hero sings and finally takes flight while singing “Defying gravity”. The song is fantastic, the way it’s staged is amazing, and I can’t imagine any way that signature moment could ever be as breathtaking done up in a movie. However, they might be able to improve the rest of it which is let’s face it, pretty mediocre when compared to that one moment.

The movie version is being shepherded along over at Universal by producer Marc Platt. Platt had a hand in making Wanted happen, and he’s already working on Wanted 2. The Wicked stage version is a monster hit, ten years from now it’ll probably be regarded as the new Phantom of the Opera. So he’ll almost certainly have no trouble getting people to see it.