The Wiz Live!

The Wiz Live! is a television production of the Broadway musical that reimagines The Wizard of Oz in a contemporary urban setting. A young woman from Kansas is swept into the magical land of Oz, where she sets out along the yellow brick road with a scarecrow, a tin man and a lion, each hoping the powerful Wiz can solve what troubles them. Their journey brings them up against the wicked Evillene, and the outcome depends on what they discover about themselves along the way. The musical, which won seven Tony Awards including Best Musical, had already inspired an earlier feature film with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.

This NBC broadcast was directed by Matthew Diamond and Kenny Leon, with a screenplay by Harvey Fierstein. It came after Diamond's Camp Rock (2008) and Kenny Leon's first film, and before Diamond's Falsettos (2017) and Twelfth Night (2025), and Leon's In My Dreams (2015) and Hairspray Live! (2016). Executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron assembled a cast of singers and performers, among them Queen Latifah as the Wiz, Mary J. Blige as Evillene, Uzo Aduba as Glinda, Amber Riley as Addaperle, David Alan Grier as the Cowardly Lion and Ne-Yo as the Tin-Man, with Cirque du Soleil Theatrical contributing to the staging. Audience response has been warm: it holds a 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 2,700 votes, and a 7 out of 10 on TMDB.