Friday night, I got an e-mail about several Oz rumors. I decided to answer them. I then decided to share them on my blog.
Tim Burton's doing a CGI animated Oz project?
Tim Burton is a big Oz fan. He did an admirable adaptation of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and is now working on "Alice in Wonderland." This has been rumored for years. Anyways, with Burton's rate, I'd bet he'll get around to Oz someday, it's just not happening yet.
What's up with Willard Carroll's Bollywood project?
There has been no update in years, but I hear that's how Bollywood is.
Why haven't we heard anything about that Todd McFarlane Oz movie recently? Has it been canceled?
Josh Olson turned in his script for that Oz movie. You can bet that it gets development hell like Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and Disney's "Enchanted," though... I doubt the projected 2010 release is going to happen, as it hasn't even begun production yet.
What's that Dark Oz movie?
"Dark Oz" got a budget and a director. It looks like it'll get made. Being released is another matter entirely...
American McGee's Oz? What happened?
It took them several years to announce that the video game had been shelved, but they claimed there was a movie version in the works. You can actually bet that it's not likely to happen. There's a movie based on their "Alice" game in the works, but that had been a big selling game. The Oz game was never even finished.
What's The Sword of Oz?
It was a digital "Which Way" book about a knight named Arthur Gale (yeah...) who winds up in Oz and helps the Munchkins seal away what seems to be the Wicked Witch of the East. Not much to it. The site is http://www.nextgenbooks.com , but it's been pulled and getting a "Special Edition" in September 2009.
Why hasn't that Nintendo DS game come out?
So far, that DS game, called "Riz-zoawd," was only for a foreign market. It's yet to get an English version, and may never. Well, that is until the ROM gets on the internet and a DS ROM hacker with too much time on their hands make a hack/translation of it. (It's lack of availability in the US is why I wasn't too interested when I heard about it.) Anyways, we're still waiting on the Wii game based on the MGM movie.
So, behind all of these so-called "rumors," there's some fact. It's just that some facts have been obscured and exaggerated by over-hype by fans and, maybe, the press and the people who announced them...
About a month ago Netflix sent us a DVD of a film called "Marigold" (2007) starring Ali Larter of "Heroes" fame. I was stunned in the closing credits to see that Willard Carroll was producer and writer ... so I put two-and-two together and realized that this was the Bollywood project we'd heard was in the works. Of course, one tip-off was a cameo by Marc Lewis, a former Oz Club board member and past recipient of the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award. --Sean
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