Cool News
The Yellow Brick Road Must Have Many On Ramps!! There's Another OZ Project In The Works??
Merrick here...
Not to be confused with Sci Fi Channel's recent TIN MAN miniseries (will there be a sequel? A series based around it?)...or the Todd McFarlane/Josh Olson driven OZ...or the completely unrelated HBO prison series OZ...Hip-hop artist Pras Michel (The Fugees) has optioned the DARK OZ comic trilogy. The intent is to produce three live action films, in which Michel would star as the Scarecrow.
Storyline follows an older Dorothy Gale in a "gothic and more macabre" setting as she journeys through Oz with the characters known to millions via Frank L. Baum's "Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
...says THIS ARTICLE in Variety.
Michel produced THE MUTANT CHRONICLES movie that should hit theaters sometime this year.
I love, love, love, LOVE all things OZ...but this seems a bit much. I can't imagine such over saturation is good for the market, or our spirits.
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+ Expand All
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Return To Oz...Tin Man...Fugee Oz......BEWARE THE WHEELERS!
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You think there will be any connection with the McFarlane Wizard of Oz figures that came out some years ago? Very dark, indeed.
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the one thing no one seems to think of is just to adapt the books. You could have some amazing films done from this, especially if you try to capture a style that would match the books. You wouldn't even need to make it contemporary. Keeping the time period intact and transitioning to Oz would be fantastic. Everyone ultimately knows that no one will accept these "re-imaginings" of such a classic story in this way. The best Oz related re-interpretation was a short story I read several years ago called Emeral City Blues about what happens when nuclear winter visits Oz.
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We already had that with RETURN TO OZ, back in 1985. (Great movie, BTW.)
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Wow. Another "dark" take on the Oz series. How fucking original. What is it this time? Dorothy's a stripper? A quadriplegic? A deaf-mute whose eyes are sewn shut?
How about, you know, just having a decently-budgeted remake of the original story? You'd think a book in which an orphan survives a tornado only to be hunted down by bears and wolves and tigers and flying monkeys and fucking witches after committing manslaughter would be "dark" enough.
That's all these goddamn emo kids know these days. Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Kotter! Why don't we remake Care Bears, but make it "dark!" Subversive!
Bah. -
was great.
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was great.
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So is Michael Jackson gonna be an OZ character again? I'd imagine that would make it a higher rating, y'know, not for kids at least.
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always had a slightly darker tone than the stupid movie. That movie has become so iconic of Oz and it really was a poor representation of the source material.
Return to Oz was pretty cool and was more in the spirit of the books. I look forward to a darker re-imagining of this story. -
Doesn't matter if it's "Hey, let's make them dark/horror" or "Hey, let's spoof them like Shrek does".
I think after Snow White with Sam Neill and Sigourney Weaver, the Alice Computergame (Was it Alice?) and...well...Shrek everything has been done. So unless you don't have a BRILLANT idea, don't do it. Or at least wait till 2025, then it's probably "a fresh take" agein. -
And I'm not even kidding.
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Why don't we reverse this darkening trend? We can take 'dark' stories and give them a 'light' twist. For instance, they can clean up 'Crime and Punishment' a bit and make it a rousing tale full of song & dance about plucky, impoverished Russians. They could even animate it like Veggie Tales! Then they could follow up with a happier version of Anne Frank. Also, Michael Jackson is enough of an Oz character in real life.
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http://tinyurl.com/2ehxw6
Seinfeld in OZ. -
Love Oz.
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lost in oz http://tinyurl.com/38agw2
woulda been really cool, far better than that tin man crap. just tell the fucking stories the way theyre layed out in the story and forget about adding in a gothic twist wherever you see fit. -
dont be jealous doushe
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Well, it's a demographic I guess.
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Remember American McGee's Alice the game from way back when? They did the gothic thing brilliantly and if anything is deserving of a gothic tone, it's Alice, not this...
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They have had the lightening trend already - Le Morte D'Arthur became Monty Python and the Holy Grail and eventually Spamalot. Disney's also notorious for taking dark fables and 'sanitizing' them.
If they were going to do a 'new, darker' take on Oz, the least they could have done was gone to the Oz Squad comic series from the 90's. -
Mar 03, 2008 12:02:25 PM CST
I would love to see someone direct a "lighter, fluffier" take on
by ar42
Oh wait, I guess that's just about every adaptation of a genre novel ever.
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the play/musical gets a resounding "medium", but the book is good times. The book is always better, no? This project sounds "eh." which is one noch below "meh."i believe the rating system goes "blah", "bleh", "eh", "meh", "ah", "oooo", and the coveted "oohhhhh".
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That might make it atleast mildly interesting.
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the novel, not the musical...well, the musical to a certain extent, is the BEST adult treatment of all thing Ozian. When Spielberg does the movie of the B'way show (rumor is he purchased the rights secretly) I hope he returns some of the darkness of original novel. But by that time with all these Oz rethinks the original Oz rethink will look tired, reductive and repetative.
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Mar 03, 2008 1:13:36 PM CST
LOVED Return to Oz.... despised the SciFi Channel Crap
by superduper3000
Return to Oz was fantastic... a completely different and still entertaining take on the series. It wasn't Wizard, but different...
The recent SciFi channel shitfest on the other hand...well... do we really need nihilistic, leather-clad suicidal takes on everything? Seriously...stop that shit NOW!
Persepolis
http://tinyurl.com/3xuzxk -
Please just go the Peter Jackson Kong route and hire a superstar director with a true passion for the original to make a colossally-budgeted epic. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's a chance in hell this would result in a movie superior to the 1939 version, but at least this would eliminate the need for 20 different versions of the story and give us one definitive modern vision.
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...OZ IS something that can be revisted. The original film is a masterpiece, but quite a departure from the very rich source material. The cartoon series was closer, and quite good. Return To Oz was a good dark take on the tale. But another dark take, to coexsist with ANOTHER dark take? This might be the wiz to the other guys Return.
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that's a bad pattern to follow...for multiple reasons...
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Both the book and the play are really good. That being said, they're *not* the same story. The musical takes character names and a few situations from the book and adapts them into a pretty darn good musical. The book is really interesting, but would never work as a musical if translated literally. As OZ adaptations, both are interesting takes on the OZ mythos, but neither is really an adaptation of the original stories. Truthfully, faithful adaptations of the books wouldn't work too awfully well as the books are all fairly episodic in nature.
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The classic is the best version.
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I mean...really...
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Nipsey Russell 1918-2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipsey_Russell -
and start making the other Oz books into movies. At this point they're just spinning their wheels.
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...as one of THE most over-remaked/parodied stories in history. ENOUGH!
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There's a great series of Oz movies sitting there just waiting to be made. Why the fuck are they instead just setting out to do anything BUT the classic Oz stories? Pras Michel as the Scarecrow?? That's not gonna work. Although I might buy all three of Dorothy's companions as mo-capped characters, the tech is so good now. You still need the right actors in the parts though. This isn't a race thing. There's no reason why the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion couldn't be played by anyone, whatever race. Return To Oz RULED!!! I would love someone to make an Oz movie who was influenced by the darkness of Return To Oz.
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Yuck
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Already. Damn.
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Re Oz and Christmas Carol. OZ has been parodied a lot (usually on TV), but has been 'remade' rather infrequently unlike CHRISTMAS CAROL.
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Baum lived in. Just thought I'd share that.
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I heard him whisper "bomb" and "states" in teh same paragraph. He also secretly shared his negative opinion of the current administration to a spy contact of mine. Clearly the world is a better place now that this threat has been dealt with. seriously, what the fuck was that? War changes you, people, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We are psycologically damaging hundreds of thousands of our countrymen who selflessly offered themselves to protect our country, not police every third-rate-vegetable-stand country on the planet that we "heard" terrorists hang out. alright, soap box over. That puppy thing was sad, though
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We could do an original movie for a change..Damned remakes....
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"Dorothy retreats into a fantasy world because she is being RAPED"
That's called The Maxx. -
I understand what yer sayin'. The Simpsons did it best when they turned "A Streetcar Named Desire" into a musical.
You can always depend on the kindness of strangers... To pluck up your spirits, and shield you from dangers...
Taking the delicious, ironic final line from Tennessee Williams and turning it into Hollywood fluff was fucking brilliant! -
Yep, who can ever forget the MTV Unplugged debacle where Lauryn Hill talked and talked and talked, cried some, talked some more, sang one or two songs, then talked and cried. Some people I know still keep asking me, "What the fuck was that about?"
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This "latest" Oz project began in 1994 with Caliber comics oz by Ralph Griffith and Stuart Kerr, so its not really so "new."
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Also, the McFarlane toy line came out just a couple of years after that Caliber Oz series too. Hmmmm...
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the books work well on there own. no nead to to a twist to them. I like all the books i have read (7) but HATE the most know movie. did see a B&W one that was a little more in line with the books once.
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Though they are an interconnected story the Oz comics from Caliber morphed into the Dark Oz title from Arrow (same team, just different publishers), still seeing this story on screen would be great to see. Personally, I think that any straight up adaption of the Wizard book would always end up being compared to the MGM musical. Return to Oz was so muffed storywise that few folks even remembered it being done. If there was a straight-up faithful movie done I'd like to see them start with the second book (Land Of Oz), whose story is amazing, epic, and still a bit controversial. I'll gladly watch ANY Oz on the big screen (except perhaps a remake of The Wiz), but it's GREAT news to see Dark Oz fionally announced in production- that is long overdue!
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Am I the only one who thinks Judy Garland looked hot in the WOZ? With her plaid skirt and hair braided, I thought she looked cute. And let’s face it, she had a nice pair of jugs!
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That would be a unique new approach.
Hey, non-readers! Dorothy isn't the only protagonist in Oz stories! Tin Man became that way because he was cursed to chop off all his own limbs, and his head.
Or better yet, if you're going to do a weird, dark version of Oz, then do an accurate adaptation of "Wicked" (the book, and not the musical!!!) - It would be an awesome adventure drama to watch on the silver screen. I'd much rather watch a movie about Elphaba than another one about that naive fuck-up, Dorothy. -
Pras is the least popular of the defunct Fugees, and hasn't had a money earning hit in years. Where's the cash for this epic going to come from? This is one guy's pipe dream.
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Could be the new "Wiz"! URK!
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TIN MAN was horrid. I wonder if they'll ever do another respectable OZ film. I thought RETURN TO OZ was a really great, unheralded film, but I find it hard to believe no one has even attempted to produce a quality attempt at one of the other OZ stories since. Especially with all the success of Harry Potter and LORD OF THE RINGS.
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I love Oz stuff, but jeez, I'm tired of seeing "re-inventions" of the Oz universe that inevitably get all goth and dreary and "dark". Okay, we get it, it's an allegory for the hood/drug use/mental issues. It's been done to death. Can someone have the balls to do a non-goth Oz movie?
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A faithful adaptation of the Oz books, maybe even one that's a semi-sequel to Return to Oz, would be great to see on screen. Why they're making all of these Oz adaptations so dark and gloomy is beyond me. The Oz books weren't written by the Brothers Grimm. That's not to say they're all bright and happy like the first (even the first book had some dark moments), but for fuck's sake it's not beyond an audience to be captivated by something light-hearted. Also, rather than reinventing the Oz mythos for the umpteenth time, it'd be nice to have a progression of the story. Why not use the stories of the 1939 film and Return as a springboard for something NEW?
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