Gregory Maguire's novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West", which inspired Broadway's musical "Wicked", will serve as the source material for an eight-hour miniseries in development at ABC reports TV Line.

 

Salma Hayek will produce and Erk Jendersen ("Band of Brothers") is penning the series which insiders stress will be very much based on the novel, not the musical, so there'll be no song numbers such as "Defying Gravity". This means it will essentially serve as a prequel/companion piece to L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books.

 

The announcement in now way effects Universal's planned film adaptation of the musical itself, or the various other Oz-themed films in the works.

Hmm, another TV thing I won't see? Smashing.

I know why they are doing this (mass appeal) but the souce material is quite boring. Don't get me wrong the book is interesting to read.. but putting it on the screen seems iffy. This could go the way of Tin Man (no one watches it).

Well the Tin-Man is still on my list to watch, mainly because Zooey Deschanel is in it.

Loved the book.

Didn't know it was being made into a mini-series so now I'm excited to see it 4 or 5 years from now when it finally reaches NZ shores, but IMO, even though the book was great, it's a bit sparse of discription of things to get a good feel of how OZ looked prior the Wizard's reign and also all the different locales that are visited in the book so hopefully they do a good job on that front.

 

A.