Variety reports that Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures are teaming up to produce Oz, which will be based on L. Frank Baum’s books, the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, and not a little bit of spill-over from several modern fantasy and science fiction flicks. The project is based on an idea by Todd McFarlane (the creator of Spawn) that was “fleshed out and pitched by Josh Olson (who wrote, among other things, this week’s episode of Masters of Science Fiction: “The Discarded”).
The plan for Oz is that Olson will write the script and McFarlane will co-produce with Basil Iwanyk (who produced 2004’s Mindhunters). Rick Benattar (associate producer of 2003’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) will be the executive producer.
McFarlane’s vision of Oz, according to Variety, is “a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight. That was clear with a toy line he launched several years ago that featured a buxom Dorothy and Toto reimagined as an oversized snarling warthog. Olson has something a little tamer, and PG, in mind.”
Olson said “I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do. The appealing thing about the Baum books to me is how wildly imaginative they are. There are crazy characters from amazing places. I want this to be ‘Harry Potter’ dark, not ‘Seven’ dark.”
They both expect to be melding Baum’s imagination with modern visual effects. McFarlane said “My pitch was ‘How do we get people who went to Lord of the Rings to embrace this? I want to create [an interpretation] that has a 2007 wow factor. You’ve still got Dorothy trapped in an odd place, but she’s much closer to the Ripley from Alien than a helpless singing girl.”
Neither one would give any plot specifics, but Olson said the film will be closer to a sequel than a remake. “We still want to take advantage of the first film, which might be the most beloved of all time, and rely on its place in your cultural memory to bubble beneath the surface. A lot of the plot is mine, but the characters are all Baum.”
The full Variety story is here.