Team StarKid’s big news today is obviously the long-awaited YouTube release of A Very Potter Senior Year, but the group has used trailer videos within the release to also announce their next projects – a new parody musical, Twisted, and an original graphic novel called Quicksand Jack.

The playlist for A Very Potter Senior Year features sneak-peek announcement videos for each of the projects interspersed between portions of the musical’s first act.

Twisted

For those who know their musical theatre, even the imagery here may have elicited a gasp of joy from you. Team StarKid’s new musical, Twisted – The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier is an obvious parody melding of Disney’s Aladdin and the Tony-Award winning musical Wicked, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire.

If you’re unfamiliar with Wicked, it is an extremely clever prequel to the classic The Wizard Of Oz, which focuses on Elphaba, a green-skinned girl who we know as the Wicked Witch of the West. It is a complete alteration of perspective and a sympathetic explanation for the events of The Wizard of Oz. It’s doubtful that anyone who knows Wicked will look at The Wizard Of Oz through quite the same eyes ever again.

In creating Twisted, Team StarKid seem to have taken this concept and applied it to Aladdin, where we will see Jafar as our protagonist. Perhaps Twisted will even change the way we see Aladdin in the future! The timing is rather perfect, with the Wicked movie finally going into production and Aladdin making the leap to Broadway.

Quicksand Jack

Moving to a new medium for StarKid, Quicksand Jack is a new seven-part graphic novel from writers Nick and Matt Lang. It will be illustrated by Jen Lang and Teia Smith. Quicksand Jack is a completely original venture, which makes it a little harder to theorise about, but it appears to be a Wild West story, possibly in a mining town, and possibly with zombies. The video teases: “There is something evil beneath the town of Brimstone. Seven will kill to protect it. He will fight to destroy it.” The video features character portraits, presumably of the seven evil protectors, and a look at the gun-toting eponymous Jack. Quicksand Jack is due to be released this summer.

What are your thoughts on these two new projects from StarKid Productions?