ABC’s Wicked TV Miniseries: Whatever Happened to It?
No one mourns the Wicked TV miniseries. (Apparently.)
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On the heels of the Wicked movie musical (Part 1!) starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande debuting this past weekend to a $165 million global box office (against a reported $150 million budget), TVLine got to wondering:
“Hey, wasn’t ABC once upon a time planning a Wicked TV series? Whatever happened to that?”
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To refresh your memory, just in case you weren’t reading TVLine just days after this here website launched in January of the year 2011….
TVLine reported nearly 14 years ago that actress-producer Salma Hayek was teaming with ABC to develop an eight-hour miniseries adaptation of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the Gregory Maguire bestseller that spawned the Broadway musical phenomenon. (Our insider stressed back then that the miniseries would be based on the novel, and not the hit musical.)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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That TVLine scoop broke just a few short days after the Broadway production grossed $2,228,235 for the week ending Jan. 2, 2011 — setting what was then a house record at the Gershwin Theatre and also marking the highest gross for a week of performances in Broadway history. So, it made sense that ABC thought it’d be for good to capitalize on the popular IP.
ABC Studios was set to make the miniseries with Hayek and Jose Tamez through the pair’s Ventanarosa Productions. It was also reported that Hayek might play a supporting role in the project, which was being penned by Erik Jendresen (from Band of Brothers and more recently Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and next year’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning).
Interestingly, two years prior to our reporting on Hayek’s Wicked pitch, ABC — under then-president Steve McPherson — had passed on a Wicked miniseries. But McPherson’s successor, former ABC Family boss Paul Lee, resurrected it soon after taking the reins in summer 2010. Lee departed Disney in 2016.
The Wicked miniseries never came to be, however. Was it the victim of something bad? Or did the eight-parter’s back-of-napkin budget quickly begin defying gravity?
Representatives for Hayek did not respond to TVLine’s request for comment on the Wicked series’ ultimate fate; neither did reps for screenwriter Jendresen.
UPDATE: Wicked author Gregory Maguire, meanwhile, responded to TVLine with “an emoji shrug,” telling us through a spokesperson on Tuesday that “while the rights to such a non-musical filmed presentation are still owned by a separate entity, there has been no apparent movement to use those rights by said entity.”
Back in January 2011, the first rumblings of a Wicked movie musical actually based on the Broadway show were about six months old, with JJ Abrams, James Mangold, Ryan Murphy and Rob Marshall among the directors who’d reportedly thrown their hats into the ring.
Many years later, Jon M. Chu eventually landed the gig, and filming with Erivo and Grande began in December 2022.
Would you have been interested to see an eight-part TV miniseries adapt Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West?
(If you make a purchase through our links, TVLine may earn a commission.)
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