As my estimable colleague Kyle Buchanan reported yesterday, producers of the new Wicked movie musical have zeroed in on four possible directors for the film: Star Trek's J.J. Abrams, Walk the Line's James Mangold, Glee's Ryan Murphy and Chicago's Rob Marshall. But fortunately, my sister is dating a guy who is cousins with a girl who went to camp with this one dude who works in Universal's mailroom, and was able to get me each director's pitch for their vision of Wicked. Click ahead to experience the wonder.
J.J. Abrams
The erstwhile creator of Lost and Alias envisions Jennifer Garner and Keri Russell in the roles of Elphaba and Glinda, with the portly Greg Grumberg somehow lucking into playing the love interest, Fiyero. The movie would get off to an exciting start, but quickly jumps the rails as the movie suddenly becomes all about ancient prophecies and clones and stuff, and we don't see Glinda until the last five minutes of the movie, when she suddenly casts a spell that purports to explain everything but makes little sense. Abrams would insist on casting a giant, floating red ball as the Wizard.
James Mangold
The director of Knight and Day believes that the title Wicked is tired and already has a series of terribly pun-filled titles lined up, including Shock and Oz, Bait and Witch, and Yours, Mine and Oz. Believing he works best with much-maligned crazy people, he's already lined up Tom Cruise as Elphaba, Joaquin Phoenix as Glinda and Russell Crowe as Fiyero. Even though his contract stipulates that Crowe shape up to play the love interest, Crowe will shamble on to the set weighing a whopping 315 lbs, smelling of cheap Newcastle Ale, and demand the script be re-written to focus solely on his character, who must be riding a zebra whenever he's on-screen.
Ryan Murphy
The creator of Glee and Nip/Tuck is a dab hand at managing both melodrama and music, but the tone of the movie will shift so violently from scene to scene, from high drama to farce to gay murder mystery, that it quickly gets away from him. Elphaba, played by Lea Michele -- natch -- turns to a life of crime to pay her tuition to Shiz University, dressing up as a Shriner to rob magic banks. Meanwhile, Glinda, played by whomever wins the reality show competition America's Next Top Witch, has a drunken sexual encounter with a Munchkin and becomes pregnant, thought the pregnancy is completely forgotten about until the last number and Glinda has the baby off-stage and never refers to him again. Fiyero will turn out to be secretly a woman, the Wizard will turn out to be secretly an elk, and all munchkins will be played by Chris Colfer through the magic of CGI. There will probably be horrible white rapping.
Rob Marshall
Convinced that people who go to see movie musicals do not actually like musicals, Marshall will once again have all musical sequences take place as either daydreams, hallucinations, or movies-within-a-movie. The film will focus on a director, "Rob Marshal" (played by Ken Watanabe) who is frustrated that his movie version of Wicked is not coming together and imagine how the songs might look performed on screen. Many numbers will also be performed as a voice-overs as his Glinda (played by Nicole Kidman) can no longer physically move her mouth and is cursed with a frozen kabuki death mask of a face. However, the cinematography will be gorgeous.