in 16 different countries and is still going strong. A two-part film adaptation, directed by Jon M. Chu starring Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero is currently in the works. The first part is set for release on Christmas Day in 2024, with the second part to follow a year later. Inception and development Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz discovered Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West while on vacation, and saw its potential for a dramatic adaptation. However, Maguire had released the rights to Universal Pictures, which had planned to develop a live-action feature film. In 1998, Schwartz persuaded Maguire to release the rights to a stage production while also making what Schwartz called an "impassioned plea" to Universal producer Marc Platt to realize Schwartz's own intended adaptation. Persuaded, Platt signed on as joint producer of the project with Universal and David Stone. The novel, described as a political, social, and ethical commentary on the nature of good and evil, takes place in the Land of Oz, in the years surrounding Dorothy's arrival. The story centers on Elphaba, a misunderstood, smart, and fiery girl with emerald-green skin, who grows up to become the notorious Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda, the beautiful, blonde, popular girl who grows up to become Glinda the Good Witch of the South. The story is divided into five scenes based on the location and presents events, characters, and situations adapted from L Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and its 1939 film adaptation in new ways. It is designed to set the reader thinking about what it really is to be "Wicked," and whether good intentions with bad results are the same as bad intentions with bad results. Schwartz considered how best to condense the novel's dense and complicated plot into a sensible script. To this end, he collaborated with Emmy Award-winning writer Winnie Holzman to develop the outline of the plot over the course of a year, while meeting with producer Marc Platt to refine the structural outline of the show, creating an original stage piece rather than a strict adaptation of Maguire's work. While the draft followed Maguire's idea of retelling the story of the 1939 film from the perspective of its main villain, the storyline of the stage adaptation "goes far afield" from