Horror themed remakes have been done before, but New Line has just announced that they’ll be adding that spin to ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ The idea was pitched by Mike Van Waes and will give us a new look at L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel ‘The Wonderful Wizard.’ While we know that this project will be tied to the world Baum wrote, it is unclear at this time if we’ll be given a retelling of the classic tale or if the story will just be set somewhere in the same world.
While we haven’t seen any of Waes’ work on the big screen quite yet, it is clear that he’ll be a name to look out for. He has just sold the script ‘Hammerspace’ to Warner Brothers and a book proposal called ‘Peeves ‘ to Harper Collins with the film rights being snapped up by Fox Animation. His work is catching the attention of some major studios in rather short order.
There are plenty of options to follow Dorothy, Toto, the Lion, the Tinman, and the Scarecrow into battle against the Wicked Witch of the West and make it a horror themed outing. From murder to magic to flying monkeys it is ripe for giving us frights instead of a family friendly dialogue. However, we could just as easily see what happens in the Wicked Witch’s realm and maybe play with the idea that she wasn’t so bad as was shown in the novel and Broadway Musical ‘Wicked.’
Hell, maybe it will focus on what The Wicked Witch of the East was up to before this happened:
New Line clearly has room to gamble with horror as ‘The Conjuring 2’ racked up $320 million worldwide at the box office while ‘Lights Out’ pulled in $149 million but only had a $5 million budget. They’ve also got ‘Annabelle 2’ and ‘Stephen King’s It’ coming out later this year so seeing them slow down on horror is quite unlikely.
Are you looking forward to a new take on ‘The Wizard of Oz’ grounded in horror? Do you think we’ll be getting a retelling of the main tale or some other aspect of Oz? Share your thoughts below!
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
