Posted on 11/17/2010 5:28:25 AM PST by Red Badger
Whenever you remake a revered Hollywood film, there’s bound to be controversy, but going right to the original material is certainly an interesting approach. Warner Bros is in early talks with Robert Zemeckis to direct a live-action remake of the The Wizard of Oz and plans to use the original script from the 1939 classic. Warner Bros owns the screenplay because Ted Turner bought it along with the MGM library before Warner Bros bought Turner’s empire.
This latest Oz twist comes as Disney is trying very hard to mount The Great And Powerful Oz. Sam Raimi is developing that film while he simultaneously develops World of Warcraft for Warner Bros and Legendary. Disney and Raimi want Robert Downey Jr as their star. The original Wizard of Oz script had a total of 19 writers (seems not much has changed in Hollywood) with many of them uncredited, including Bert Lahr who played the film’s Cowardly Lion.
This wouldn’t be the first hugely high-profile remake for Zemeckis; he's in the middle of a Yellow Submarine animated redux for Disney, scheduled for a 2012 release. Also, after working for years in performance-capture animation, Zemeckis has been moving toward a return to a live-action films, attaching himself to Timeless also at Warner Bros.
The original Yellow Submarine was too much to sit through. I can’t imagine another. The only thing to make it worse would be to include Yoko Ono.
The books I listed were just the ones that Baum wrote. There have been many others as well.
They are remaking True Grit. Nothing is sacrosanct in Hollywood.
Hollywood needs to leave this movie(Wizard Of Oz)alone.It doesn’t need a remake.The Wizard Of Oz is an All time classic movie and there is nothing that any of these directors can do to make a better version.
Yep, and the remakes are failures most of the time, just as when they remade “Stagecoach”. The original was unbeatable.
I am mad they are going to remake the classic “Poltergeist”. Not quite up there Wizard of Oz, but still a sci-fi\horror classic. This Wizard of Oz is a stupid idea,will fail and barely make the the probable 250 million dollar budget back. Zemekis would be wise to run not walk from this idea. A Lord of the Rings prequel, smart, same director, same chemistry. But when Tina Fey and Steven Colbert qualify as “Brilliant” Hollywood writing talent, what are you left with.
The other replies aside, the movie was a extreme;y sanitized version of the book. If you’re going to do a remake do it accurate to the book the way it should have been done in the first place.
Was the original a classic? Sure. Was it done properly? With 19 writers on it? No.
RIMMER: There's everything here, all the mail, entertainment cassettes, a new batch of movies.
LISTER: Oh! The new Friday the 13th movie -- Friday the 13th part one thousand six hundred and forty nine.
RIMMER: Look, Casablanca! They've re-made Casablanca!
LISTER: Philistines. I mean how can you re-make Casablanca? The one starring Myra Dinglebat and Peter Beardsley was definitive.
HOLLY: I saw that one -- knockout! "Of all the space bars on all the worlds you had to re-materialize in mine."
True story. I had a black coworker who would walk down the halls singing that.
One day I walked past his office singing 'shuffle on down, shuffle on down the road'
Absolutely cracked him up...
(I'm eeeeeevil that way)
It’s a sin against culture, that you remembered that.
And that I read it in their voices.
Zemeckis is an excellent filmmaker. I love the cast of the original, but not the corniness of the late 1930 s that informed the way the story was told.
If it exists, there is a Red Dwarf of it.
In a decade or two computer power will rise to a level that will allow a rebuild of the original film. It could be rendered in 3D and widescreen. It could even be rendered as a virtual interactive environment. Sets could be altered while leaving the original actors untouched. I say hold off on remakes until they can be done properly.
Sometime around 2025 all that will be needed to create a film/3D/virtual environment will be a script and a super computer render farm...actors no longer required.
Not to mention the sequels written by Ruth Plumly Thompson etc.
...followed by virtual paparazzi
Agree. Hate that corny “it was all a dream” thing. The book was inspired by events of the late 1890s that had to do with silver and commerce.
There is no imagination and even less talent left in Hollywood. I haven't been to the movies in years.
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