# The Wizard of Oz remake/prequel news



## Sinister (Apr 18, 2004)

Jesus Christ God Almighty!!! This **** has got to stop, like now! I am not against remakes, but all I had to see was that the producer of that goddamn piece of **** film franchise, "Twilight" would be behind this!

Read on folks for what could be one of the worst decisions in Hollywood history.
















http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-oz-next-franchise.html?nc

Yeah, I feel justified putting this in the Horror forum. This is horrific news. So there.


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## Zurgh (Dec 21, 2009)

I agree!

"would be more faithful" to the books!?!? Very doubtful... Hollywood loves to re-write originals into barely recognizable parodies.

"set closer to the present" and "darker" should read 'Hip-er and edgier, filled with pop-culture references, schmaltzy teen angst, and overloaded with CGI effects!' Don't we have enough of that, already?

1/2 the article is on viewer demographics & legal BS!!!

This IS horror!


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## The Archivist (May 31, 2009)

It is a forgone conclusion that there is no more original thought in Hollywood these days. They've hit bottom of the idea barrel yet someone just handed them a shovel...
I miss the old days of movies regardless if they were horror or not. Movies such as The Thin Man where you had to pay attention to the movie cause it was story heavy and you couldn't tell what was going to happen next unlike today's movies. Even the movie "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford is a great movie. I personally feel that the blame should be hoisted onto the companies that produced the CGI especially when they made the process cheap enough for everyone to have access to.


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## Death's Door (Mar 22, 2006)

There was already a remake done on the Wizard of Oz in 1978- it was called "The Wiz", with the gloved one (Michael Jackson) and the drunk one (Diana Ross).


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## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

I watched a mini-series called "Tin Man" recently. A modern, darker version of TWoO. Worth seeing, and it didn't try to pass itself off as a remake of the original. Hollywood will never be able to re-capture the essence of the first Oz; they need to drop this project.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

I didn't care for "The Wiz" at all, but "Tin Man" was well done and worth watching. I think there's room in the world for fresh takes on old ideas. Nothing can replace the original Wizard of Oz movie for those of us who grew up with it (and I still watch it when it's on TV), but it would be interesting to see how close to the original books someone could come - would be a pretty monumental task, IMO.


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## Zurgh (Dec 21, 2009)

I do agree with your take on it,too, Roxy. But I fear It will be a total craptacular mess. I see them turning Dorthy into A whored up & pregnant teen, drinkin' Mt. Dew, Grindin, on her skateboard, blogging on her I-phone, with all the Ironic wit of Juno!!!! The tin man becomes the terminator, the Lion becomes a cast member from cats, & I don't wanna think what they'll do to the scarecrow!

I will have to check out "the Tin man", Thanks for the heads up!

My Mother used to read me the books when I was very little... May account for my rather twisted nature today...


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

I'm pretty sure Dorothy did not drink Mountain Dew in the original books You're safe from that.


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## DeathTouch (Sep 6, 2005)

I was hoping that you was talking about the new dark version that I have heard that was coming out. That I want to see.


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## Mr_Chicken (Nov 26, 2008)

It's just not necessary. Make up your own fantasy adventure story-- we've seen this one already... and, frankly, it hasn't aged since it's release in '39, so why mess with it?


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

I didn't know the Twilight dork was behind it... Totally hopping off the fence and running away now.

Now to play devil's advocate the musical from back in 1939, as beloved as it is, took a HUGE TON of liberties with the source material. The original rumblings I heard about the new Oz is that it would be more faithful to the books and a bit surrealistic like the new Alice is (which Kaoru and I loved btw). I would actually LOVE to see a faithful adaptation done of Baum's stories. I don't care if the material was approached before. However I have a huge problem with Darren Lemke being involved. There's two scripts floating around for this and I haven't heard much good about either.

But if it were a faithful adaptation I wouldn't consider it a remake even bearing the same name. And as much as I loved Alice in Wonderland, Burton would NOT be right for this either. It would definitely need to be a period piece (much like Narnia) and not modernized crap.

Besides Oz is over 70 years old and I have no problem seeing that remade. It's movies that are only 2-3 decades old (*cough* Halloween, Elm Street, etc) getting remade. THOSE I have a HUGE problem and Hollywood needs to STOP in those regards.


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## Johnny Thunder (Feb 24, 2006)

There have been a few film and tv adaptations that drew upon Baum's original material, besides the 1939 one that everyone holds in high regard. To me, this is just another interpretation of the novel and not necessarily a "remake."

Either way, I'm really not interested. 

We do have a "Remake" thread buried a few pages down, so if anyone wants to vent about the pros or cons of remaking films, feel free to add your general rants there. Otherwise, we should keep this thread limited to the Oz discussion.


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## Sinister (Apr 18, 2004)

For all intents and purposes, it falls into the remake category. Consider: Would you _honestly_ be able to view a new film based on the source material without hearing Judy Garland and crew singing about being off to see the Wizard in your mind's eye and inner ear? What I am trying to say here is it will be very, very hard to distance the two with the same title, characters and situations, and have fans of the original actually buy it. The real differences would be there would be no musical numbers like in the 1939 version and have a whole different cast. I just don't believe they can make a faithful adaptation from the books and "modernize" it to keep up with Twilight crowd. Sorry, just don't see it happening. Not in Hollyweird.

I would LOVE to see all the Oz books faithfully adapted, but it isn't going to happen in our lifetime and probably not ever.


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

The problem is that too many people watch movies and don't bother reading the source material so there's a presumption on their part that the movie they saw WAS faithful to the source material. With that frame of mind anything they watch in their eyes is essentially a remake.

I actually was entertained by SyFy's Tin Man take on the story. I wouldn't say faithful there either. But none-the-less it was entertaining and not once did I compare it in my minds eye to the 1938 musical.

I'm gonna have to agree with JT in that I wouldn't classify this as a remake "per se". Something like Halloween now that's clearly a remake because the original Carpenter version WAS the source material. This is just another adaptation.

But you're right Sin, the current trend is to modernize things and this is no exception. I was pleasantly surprised that Burton kept Alice in Wonderland in its proper time period. If the same could be said for TWoO then I'll bite. But otherwise gonna pass...


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## Johnny Thunder (Feb 24, 2006)

Instead of starting a new thread, I'm going to update the existing one and we can talk about possible remakes or prequels here.

Variety is carrying an interesting story that - of all people - Sam Raimi is in "early talks" with Disney to direct a prequel called "Oz, the Great and Powerful", with Joe Roth of "Alice in Wonderland" to produce.

Per Variety:

_"Great and Powerful," based upon the 1939 classic film, tells the story of a circus wrangler who is transported via tornado to the mysterious land of Oz, where he is mistaken for an all-knowing Wizard. "Iron Man" thesp Robert Downey Jr. has long been rumored as a possible star, though no casting decisions have been made yet._

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118020637.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&ref=vertfilm&cache=false


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## Warrant2000 (Oct 8, 2008)

My daughter just performed as a Winky in Ice Towns (local ice skating rink) production of Wizard of Oz. It was a great show with over 100 kids involved.

I enjoyed the semi-spin-off of Return to Oz, which seemed to have it's own spin. I'm not a fan of assembly line series just to generate revenue.


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