Netflix has tapped screenwriter Anna Klassen to tackle a project that it has had in the pipeline for a while now, ‘Dorothy and Alice’ about two of the most popular fantasy heroes ever. The project originated with Justin Merz, a former school teacher who has since adapted ‘The Boxcar Children’ into an animated movie, and is co-penning Disney’s ‘Rose Red’, an alternate take on ‘Snow White’.
Klassen took to Twitter to announce the project:
The Cheshire Cat is out of the bag: I’m writing DOROTHY & ALICE for @Netflix, a fantasy adventure epic. I grew up reading these books & this project has been endlessly fun to craft – to reinvent treasured characters and explore the worlds I wanted to inhabit as a kid. pic.twitter.com/oaythAz4ae
— Anna Klassen (@AnnaJKlassen) April 5, 2019
Klassen previously contributed to ‘Dark Hours: Roxana’ and penned a blacklist screenplay ‘Lightning Strikes’, a biopic based on the life of J.K. Rowling.
Merz’s vision for ‘Dorothy and Alice’ found Dorothy, “haunted by nightmares of Oz’s impending destruction,” sent to an asylum for others who also “experience troubling, vivid dreams.” There, she meets Alice, “a mysterious girl who involves her in a perilous quest to not only save the worlds of imagination, but the world as we know it.”
Netflix is keeping any further details under wraps, but obviously what winds up getting made won’t be the same as this description.
This was conceived of as a Netflix original movie and a “franchise starter.”
Legendary recently announced plans to craft a new ‘Oz’-based series. In 2017, NBC launched an ambitious series ‘Emerald City’ which failed to catch on. In 2013, Disney released the big-budget film ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’, directed by Sam Raimi, starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams.
Disney also released the theatrical film ‘Alice In Wonderland’ in 2010, directed by Tim Burton, and starring Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, and Anne Hathaway. The four stars returned for the 2016 sequel ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. In 2013, ABC aired ‘Once Upon a Time in Wonderland’, a spinoff TV series based on the hit ‘Once Upon a Time’.
Are you excited about a crossover series between Oz and Wonderland?
Source: Collider
