James Cameron Reveals He “Almost” Directed ‘Wicked’ But “Couldn’t Find The Song”

Although James Cameron has been in his “blue period” since launching the Avatar franchise in 2009, the director is seeing green over what could have been.

The 3x Oscar winner revealed he almost took on Wicked movie musical adaptation as he noted that movies have “to be an event” these days for studios to give them big budgets and for audiences to see them in theater.

“The kind of movies that I like to watch, let’s say Dune or even Wicked,” he explained on The Town with Matt Belloni podcast. “I almost made Wicked back when. I really love the story, I mean The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite [movies]. This is going back 15 years.”

Confirming he met with Universal Pictures about his take on the 1995 Gregory Maguire book, turned 2003 Broadway musical, Cameron said he “couldn’t find the song” but didn’t totally rule out doing a musical in his career.

“I don’t know,” Cameron told Belloni. “Well, my favorite movie is a musical, Wizard of Oz.”

The Titanic writer/director wasn’t the first to attempt to take on Wicked, with Whoopi Goldberg among several actresses who tried to bring the pre-Broadway story to the big screen, with others in consideration being Demi Moore, Claire Danes, Salma Hayek, Laurie Metcalf, Michelle Pfeiffer, Emma Thompson and Nicole Kidman.

The story was ultimately adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, starring Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda.

Based on the musical and Maguire’s novel, Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: For Good wraps up the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda, the Good Witch (Ariana Grande) years after they first meet at Shiz University and share a life-changing encounter with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum).

Following last year’s Wicked, the second installment of the feature adaptation has marked a career-best opening for Grande, Erivo and Chu, with a $150M domestic bow and $226M globally.