The ‘new’ OZ is sounding cooler and cooler by the moment. Basing the characters created in the books (by L. Frank Baum), the story and tone will be coming from both McFarlane and Olson, and don’t expect to be seeing dance numbers and singing Munchkin either. While they still plan on keeping it in the PG-13 realm, it’s looking much darker than you’d probably expect. Check McFarlane’s take on the project:
“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.”
Nice! McFarlane, of course, released a toy series a few years back featuring the characters of OZ in ways we haven’t seen before: a goth-like Dorothy and a snarling warthog Toto. Very cool and dark stuff to be sure, but don’t expect anything like that here. While I’m sure McFarlane wouldn’t mind going in that direction, Olson has different plans:
“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.”
Either way sounds good to me! It’s gonna be dark, there’s not going to be singing, now the only question is who is gonna be cast as Dorothy? I have a few ideas that could work… Stay tuned for more on OZ, as we’ll keep you updated as the project progresses.