Friday, April 15, 2016

Details Emerge on Tom and Jerry: Back to Oz

About a month ago, a trailer for Tom and Jerry: Back to Oz - an apparent sequel to the direct-to-video spin-off of the MGM film, Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz - appeared online.


We now know the premise of the film and have the cover artwork and a release date, thanks to its listing on Amazon, where you can now you can now pre-order the DVD for its release on June 12.
With the Wicked Witch of the West now vanquished from Oz, Tom and Jerry along with Dorothy are back in Kansas! But not for long as an all-new villain has surfaced from beneath the magical land, the Gnome King! Having captured the Good Witch, the Gnome King and his army are wreaking havoc throughout Oz and need but one item to take control of The Emerald City, Dorothy's ruby slippers! It's up to our favorite cat and mouse duo to team up, go Back to Oz and save the land they love. Take to the skies, courtesy of the Wizard himself, with Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion as they make their magical journey. The laughs and adventure will roar as they encounter all-new frights and mischievous creatures down the Yellow Brick Road, 'cause "we're not in Kansas anymore!" 
While I didn't love Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz, I'm actually pretty excited to see this, mostly because the Gnome Nome King will be the big bad this time around. I'm interested in seeing if any other characters, settings, or story elements from the books end up in the film and in seeing how it expands on the "world" of the MGM film. And who knows? We might even get some nods to Return to Oz or even the DIC TV series.

Also exciting to me is the film's voice cast, which includes Frances Conroy, Jason Alexander of Seinfeld, and James Monroe Iglehart, who won a Tony for his role as the Genie in Disney's Aladdin on Broadway. We don't yet know which characters these actors will be voicing, but I assume that they will be characters that did not appear in Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz.

My only concern or complaint worth mentioning at the moment is that it does seem like the film will be given a Blu-ray release. The trailer only includes mention of the film's availability on DVD and digital HD, and Amazon does not currently have a listing up for a Blu-ray. It's possible that there are plans to release it on Blu-ray later on (maybe packaged with Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz), but we'll just have to wait and see.

1 comment:

Ozfan95 said...

GNOME King? Haha. I guess they didn't want people who weren't familier with the Oz books to think they made a misspelling.

I don't know if I'll see this movie. I didn't particularly care for the first Tom and Jerry Oz movie (though it was good for a few laughs).

I wonder what Oz books this movie will incorporate now that I know that the Nome King is included in it. I hope it has some "Ozma of Oz" in it, because that's one of my favorite Oz books.

I will wait until this movie is shown on TV. I seriously doubt it's worth owning.