Wicked Feature Adaptation Loses Director Stephen Daldry

It’s been over a year since we last heard word about the film adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway play Wicked and now it’s been revealed that Golden Globe and Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Stephen Daldry (The Crown) has exited the director chair, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Sources report that Daldry, who has been set to helm the film for nearly a decade, elected to depart the project after a new production timeline spawned scheduling conflicts with other commitments and that his exit is amicable between himself and studio Universal Pictures, who are now searching for a new director. The film was slated for a December 2021 release though was recently pulled from the schedule due to the global pandemic.

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the feature-film adaptation of the musical phenomenon seen by more than 50 million fans around the world, arrives in theaters for the 2021 holiday season. The unforgettable characters and gravity-defying songs of the beloved hit come to the big screen as the untold story of the Witches of Oz becomes the movie event that will change audiences for good.

Prior to becoming a globally touring smash as well as one of the longest-running shows on Broadway, producer Marc Platt was originally developing Maguire’s novel for the big screen. An alternate retelling of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wizard of Oz, Wicked follows two opposing witches–Elphaba and Glinda the Good– from their first meeting in college to Elphaba’s ultimate downfall and transformation into the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Wicked movie will be brought to the screen by Platt (Into the Woods, Bridge of Spies). The three-time Tony Award-winning stage musical was adapted from Gregory Maguire’s bestselling novel, “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” by book writer Winnie Holzman (My So-Called Life) and three-time Oscar-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin), who are also collaborating on the screenplay adaptation.

Wicked is produced on Broadway by Platt, Universal Stage Productions, the Araca Group, Jon B. Platt and David Stone.

(Photo Credit: Rob Kim/FilmMagic)