Demi Moore as Elphaba? Two decades ago, ‘Wicked’ would’ve had a very different cast

What is this information, so sudden and new?

Producer Marc Platt recently raised eyebrows by sharing in Vanity Fair the details of a big screen Wicked adaptation that could have been – before the musical had even come around. “I am going to try and get the timeline right if I can remember,” he said. “But I believe when I became the president of production at Universal, the project was already here… It had been optioned initially by Demi Moore’s company.”

Platt recalled that, “People who had expressed an interest in the first six months included Whoopi Goldberg and Claire Danes… Salma Hayek had had some interest, and Laurie Metcalf.” And that’s not all – “At the time, there were a few people top of mind” for Glinda, including “Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Thompson, Nicole Kidman.”

Moore is currently in the midst of a full-fledged comeback based off the strength of her fearless performance in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. But when Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West was published in 1995, Moore was one of the most powerful actors in Hollywood.

She had just come off the incredible run of A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, and Striptease, so her bankability as a box office draw was unquestionable. Platt also described Moore as completely dedicated to the project, though can’t entirely confirm she was dead-set on playing the Wicked Witch herself, Elphaba Thropp. “I think on different days she could do either, but in the moment it was definitely for Elphaba,” he said.

Maguire had no doubt who Moore ought to play should she choose to star in the film, saying he could “imagine Demi Moore naked and green on the cover of Vanity Fair” – a reference to her iconic 1991 nude cover for the magazine while seven-months pregnant.

Reps for Moore did not respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment.

Suzanne Todd, who was then an assistant to the producer Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard), also revealed that “Whoopi Goldberg’s manager wanted to buy it for her,” which Goldberg’s publicist, Brad Cafarelli, confirmed to Vanity Fair: “This is true. Whoopi loved the book and tried hard to get the rights.”

Despite Moore’s tenacity and Universal’s eagerness, the film never materialized. Todd even confirmed that there was talk of landing an equally high-powered director. “There was kind of a rumble for a minute that [Robert Zemeckis] wanted to do it,” she revealed.

A script was never completed, no stars were ever officially cast, and the project never entered production. Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical which serves as the basis of John M. Chu’s recent film, eventually convinced the rights holders to let him take a crack at a musical.

“I learned about Demi’s production company and tried to get a meeting to talk them into not doing this movie, and doing a musical instead,” he said. It’s exactly what happened, and three Tonys, a Grammy, a billion at the Broadway box office and $500+ million globally at the movies, Broadway’s Wicked and it’s big screen adaptation have become one of the most successful stage musicals and the most profitable film adaptation of a musical of all time.