LOS ANGELES: Nearly 75 years after “The Wizard of Oz,” Disney has crafted a new story about the magical kingdom, by going back to its creator — in what is tipped to be a blockbuster movie opening this weekend.
Walt Disney long sought to make a film about Oz, the imaginary land created by American author L. Frank Baum in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900, after MGM made its own version in 1939. But the project never got off the ground, and it was Sam Raimi, director of the hit “Spider-Man” and “Evil Dead” trilogies, who has finally brought it to life for Disney’s company as “Oz the Great and Powerful.”
The new film is not a remake of Victor Fleming’s masterpiece, but more a prequel that recounts events before those told in “The Wizard of Oz,” based on Baum’s original novel. “Every filmmaker knows when you make a book into a movie, the first thing you have to do is kill the book, unfortunately. You’ve got to recreate it,” Raimi told reporters ahead of the film’s release. “But I decided I could be truest to the fans of Baum’s great work if I recognized what was great and moving and touching and most effective about those books to me... and put as much of that into this picture as I could.”
The film — in which the character of Dorothy, played in the earlier version by Judy Garland, does not appear — focuses on Oscar Diggs (played by James Franco), a small-town circus magician transported to Oz by a tornado.
There, he meets three witches who see in him a wizard capable of saving the kingdom. Happy to be showered with power and riches, Diggs plays along with the misperception, until his lies begin to catch up with him. The film includes several bravura segments, including the opening scenes in black and white and the switch to color when Oz arrives — an idea taken from the 1939 movie, watched by generations of children.
Disney revisits Oz to tell new magical tale
