The Wizard of Oz Goes PG
According to today’s Variety, Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures are going to work together on “Oz,” a revisionist take on the L. Frank Baum books that gave the world “The Wizard of Oz.”Says Variety: “Conversations with McFarlane and Olson make it clear that they are still working out the tone of the film. They have plenty to work with. WB has owned the rights to the original “The Wizard of Oz” since buying Ted Turner’s empire, whose assets included the film and other plum titles in the MGM library. There are also 15 novels in the Oz series written by Baum, most in the public domain.
“McFarlane has a vision of Oz that 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.
“‘I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do,” Olson told Variety. “‘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.”
