ONE of Broadway’s most “popular” musicals hits the cinemas this week, with the first part in a blockbusting duo of bewitching gravity. Wicked is game and set to defy expectations.

Based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 revisionist rewrite of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, a cinematic adaptation of Wicked was first mooted years before the Stephen Schwartz’s musical took the world by storm. It was, in fact, only Schwartz’s intervention the prevented the film coming first.

Having stumbled across Maguire’s book while holidaying in Hawaii, Schwartz - then best known for his work on Disney films Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame - saw stage potential on the grandest scale. Universal held the film rights but the vision was Schwartz’s alone.

Brimming with ideas for a Broadway translation, Schwartz turned his attention to Universal film producer Marc Platt and committed to convincing the studio to go all in on his idea. They did, Platt jumped aboard, and a global phenomenon was born.

20 years on, Wicked is the second-highest grossing musical in Broadway history, a three-time Tony award winner and international record breaker. Schwartz may have delayed a film adaptation but, with a fan base so well established, the ultimate destination has felt inevitable from the off. This is the week it’s reached.

Wicked tells the untold stories of the witches of Oz, an alternative narrative, yarned from a very different perspective to that of Dorothy and Toto. In the eyes of a scared young girl from Kansas, the Wicked Witch of the West was nothing short of evil personified. As Maguire tells it, the truth is far from black and white. Or, should that be black and green?

Cynthia Erivo plays the western witch in question, known here as Elphaba and bullied from childhood for the colour of her skin. Pop superstar Ariana Grande is Galinda, latterly known as Glinda the Good. She suffers no such misfortune. They’re unlikely friends but anything is possible in Oz.

The film comes delivered at the directorial hands of Jon M. Chu, no stranger to Broadway, having adapted 2021’s underrated In the Heights. It’s an all bells and whistles production. All star and all opulence.

A script by Winnie Holzman, who wrote the stage musical for Schwartz, and Dana Fox splits the tale in two, with the second due next Christmas. Magical stuff.