Twisted Take On 'Oz' Coming to Theaters

What the yellow brick road could have been... and will be

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Wednesday, August 22nd 2007 at 7:19 PM

Variety has confirmed that Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures are set to bring Todd McFarlane's vision of the L. Frank Baum books that hatched The Wizard of Oz to life and as you can tell from the image of Dorothy and Toto (yeah, that's Toto) from above this isn't The Wizard of Oz from 1939.

McFarlane's vision of Oz can actually be seen online right here, which includes photography of the Twisted Land of Oz series figures, packaging pics, figure specs, downloads, plus the first chapter a new alternative Oz mythology, written by spawn.com staff writer Dion Bozman.

His vision of Oz is described as one that is dark, edgy and a muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight. I am not sure if it is unfortunate or not, and even a bit odd, that writer Josh Olson envisions a tamer, and PG, story in mind. Olson happens to be the guy that penned A History of Violence, which was neither tame nor PG, but isn't that just the way?

McFarlane is only producing the pic with Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk.

"I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do," Olson told Daily 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." Based on that comment I can get on board, Oz shouldn't be filled with serial killers, but even the Harry Potter stories are now all PG-13.

"My pitch was ‘How do we get people who went to Lord of the Rings to embrace this?’" McFarlane said. "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."

Seriously, how is this going to be PG? We are talking nothing but PG-13 and even R-rated films with images like we see above (and if you want more of those images click here). That's the Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow and the Tin Man you see to the right. Do they look PG? Yes, I know Olson said he didn't want to go the bondage queen direction, but with McFarlane aboard these images have got to come into play. Don't they, or is that just wishful thinking?

"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," Olson said. "A lot of the plot is mine, but the characters are all Baum."

No matter how you look at it, this is a production to certainly keep an eye on. Personally based on the images I have seen I would love Guillermo del Toro to take a stab at this. With McFarlane's mind, Olson's script ideas and the vision of what was Pan's Labyrinth that would be a team made in heaven on a kick ass project.