#disney couldn't acquire wicked so they just used its keywords as a template for mass producing “original” projects

[the-clock-of-the-time-dragon]

It will forever be hilarious to me that Disney wanted so fucking bad to make a Wicked movie — but couldn't get the rights from Universal — that they literally spent billions upon billions of dollars making SEVEN different films (and a whole season of television; not even including their sequels and spinoffs) more than one of which they even got Idina and Kristen to be in based on the stripped-down premise of "what if the Stock Female Antagonist™ was secretly the Misunderstood Angsty Girlboss Heroine™ all along?" (because Disney execs don't actually care about Wicked, they just saw Green, said "hey! if we can't get the real thing, why not use Our Own (and/or Public Domain) characters?" and simply followed the Marketing Department Road all the way to the bank).

Less funny is the fact they were so successful at it — regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of any of those projects — that it ended up getting the production of the actual Wicked movie delayed by more than a decade (because it would ironically have looked like a copycat and probably faded into the background if it had come out back when Disney was pumping out knockoffs every fucking year).