Way back in July 2010, we reported that Universal Pictures is bringing the hit Broadway musical Wicked to the silver screen. At the time, a number of high-profile filmmakers such as J.J. Abrams, James Mangold, Rob Marshall and Glee creator Ryan Murphy were in contention to direct, but we haven't heard anything about the project since then. Today, we have an update from composer Stephen Schwartz, who crafted the music for this stage prequel to The Wizard of Oz, who revealed to Vulture that he is starting to work on the movie, although he doesn't known how many years away it is from production.

"We're starting to do some work on it. We've actually started gearing up on it a little bit. I don't know exactly how many years away it is."

The composer also revealed that he isn't sure what how faithful the movie version should be to the hit stage play.

"What are we going to change? What are we going to keep? How do you use a whole new language and medium to tell the story? [We can] really look at it again and say, 'Oh, we can do this, and we've always wanted to do that and we couldn't onstage, but we can in a movie.' We're actually having a blast."

The play debuted in 2003, featuring an original cast that included Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth and Joel Grey. Based on Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the play retells L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, while offering untold stories of other Oz characters such as Glinda the Good Witch, Prince Fieryo and the Wizard of Oz himself.