New Line sets up a horror project inspired by The Wizard of Oz

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Growing up, I was a huge fan of the 1939 musical version of THE WIZARD OF OZ. I was so captivated by the sights and sounds of that movie I started seeking out other sources of Oz-based entertainment. I collected some of the many novels, I watched RETURN TO OZ and eventually some of the Oz movies from the silent era, I was even a member of the official Oz fan club. To this day, I'll watch anything Oz related, and I'm still waiting and hoping we'll get a faithful adaptation of the original novel. It's no musical, but it would make a great movie.

A faithful adaptation is not what we'll be getting from New Line Cinema, but the Warner Bros. subsidiary has just acquired a new Oz project – a horror movie set in the land of Oz, based on a pitch by writer Mike Van Waes.

Exactly what sort of horror Van Waes intends to bring to Oz was not made clear. The original novel by L. Frank Baum, titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and published in 1900, was about 

a young girl and her dog who are swept away to a magical world where she teams up with the Lion, the Tin Woodman, and the Scarecrow to face off against the Wicked Witch of the West.

It's Oz, so I'll see the movie Van Waes writes. This isn't the first time horror and Oz have been mixed. RETURN TO OZ came awfully close to being horror at times, and recently I watched a movie called FLYING MONKEYS, starring Maika Monroe, which drew inspiration from the winged monkeys of Oz for its horror.