Evil In its opening weekend, the film broke several box office records and grossed $165 million worldwide, as fans around the world packed theaters to see the story come to life on the big screen.

For Gregory Maguire, the author of the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the Weston which the film is based is a far cry from the Oz he first imagined nearly three decades ago.

“It’s far better than it has any right to be,” Maguire said of the film, which stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, and Ariana Grande as young Glinda, the Good Witch, with Jonathan Bailey in the cast are Fiyero, caught in a love triangle between them.

Now Maguire’s story is captivating a new generation with the two-part film adaptation, with its second release scheduled for November 2025.

But by 1994 he was broke, living in a cramped London apartment and unsure of his future.

“I was in what the British call financial embarrassment,” Maguire told Yahoo Entertainment. Due to the conditions of his visa, he could not work legally and his only option was to write. He recalled his roommate making a suggestion: “She said, ‘Gregory, I have a great idea.’ Why don’t you just write a bestseller?’”

By this time, Maguire had written several children’s books, but none had attracted much attention. He was eager to explore broader themes of pain, tragedy, and how societal expectations shape us.

What started as a humble idea – reimagining the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – became an unexpected phenomenon. Published in 1995, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Not only did it become a bestseller, but it was also adapted into a hit Broadway musical, becoming one of the longest-running shows in history, bringing in an estimated $5 billion in ticket sales worldwide since it opened in 2003.

Looking back, Maguire said his roommate’s advice felt almost prophetic.

“I didn’t write Evil “To make myself rich,” he explained. “The truth is, I was 39 and I thought, ‘Okay, you better write this before someone else does, because it’s a good idea.'”

“Are people born evil?”

In the musical version ofEvilGlinda asks the audience a question: “Are people born evil, or is evil imposed on them?”

This question preoccupied Maguire after the 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger by two young boys in Britain, which inspired the central theme of Evil.

“How do two ten-year-olds wake up in the morning and become murderers in the evening?” he asked himself at the time. There were theories – a fatherless home, bullying from siblings – but none seemed sufficient to Maguire. He took a similar approach when designing the Elphaba figure.

Elphaba’s backstory is tragic: her father rejected her because of her green skin and had to deal with her mother’s death. “I wanted to put a lot of different concepts and theories about evil on the page without drawing a conclusion,” said Maguire, who found personal parallels in Elphaba’s story.

“I was raised Catholic, I’m a gay man, I was the middle of seven children, my mother died when I was born. All of that makes me who I am,” he explained. “Similarly, all the things that happened to Elphaba are part of the reason she becomes the way she does – but it’s not just one thing.”

In writing the novel, Maguire wanted readers to make their own judgments about Elphaba as she grapples with unspoken questions about her identity and beliefs. Her resolve is tested when she refuses to join the Wizard of Oz’s repressive regime, resulting in his propaganda machine unfairly branding her “evil” and subjecting her to unwarranted persecution.

An unlikely friendship with Glinda, her popular but insecure college roommate, forces Elphaba to ask herself: Am I really evil, or has the world decided to make me that way?

Almost three decades after the book’s publication, Maguire doesn’t know the answer.

“I still don’t know what evil is,” he said. “What I know is that a person who commits an evil act suffers from a tremendous amount of self-hatred. I think evil behavior is only possible when we cannot show compassion to other people – or even ourselves.”

Maguire acknowledges that both the Broadway musical and the film took creative liberties with his original vision. In his novel, Elphaba was conceived based on Margaret Hamilton’s 1939 portrayal of the wicked witch The Wizard of Oz.

“I barely recognize it as my book anymore,” he said. “(The novel’s Elphaba) is sharp, headstrong and powerful. In the film, Cynthia Erivo is also sharp, opinionated and powerful, but she is also lovable and that is a very interesting puzzle. I watch her performance in awe and think, ‘How could you pull that off?'”

The Boys from Oz

Published as tree The Wonderful Wizard of Oz In 1900, the United States was struggling with industrial innovation and territorial expansion.

Maguire sees Baum’s Oz – with its characters traveling through unknown lands and encountering others who look and act different – as a metaphor for, particularly in the context of, America’s struggles with growth, displacement and otherness in the early 20th century Theft of Native American lands.

Maguire said he consciously incorporated these themes into his own vision, using Oz as a reflection of America’s challenges and a cautionary tale against repeating the past.

“I wanted the cultures in Oz to not understand each other, to be racist and hegemonic and responsible for the way their society doesn’t work,” he explained. “In that way, I wanted it to represent the United States somewhere between 1900 and 1930.”

Maguire has published four sequels to the original novel and one prequel. Elphiewill be published in 2025. Evil continues to evolve and Oz remains a world full of contradictions. At the same time, Maguire said it is a place of imagination, resilience and enduring hope for something better beyond the rainbow.

“I presented the world as I understood it,” Maguire said. “Perhaps I subconsciously understood that bad things that endangered us in the past will always endanger us.”

Update, November 25, 2024: This story was originally published on November 18, 2024 and has been updated with weekend box office numbers.