A few hours ago it was announced that New Line Cinema was to have Nicole Kassell direct a new adaptation of L Frank Baum's book "the Wonderful Wizard of Oz", with this article spreading across the Oz groups on Facebook https://deadline.com/2021/02/watchmen-nicole-kassell-directs-the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz-new-line-l-frank-baum-novel-1234690490/?fbclid=IwAR2H1cgemz74zyeZZ85KTS-kkExuahq6GIdeH0Yu6ZOwLNHx0T46mbs8BV4.
Now, yes, it is still VERY EARLY days, so you will not much or any details of what the final film could be, how faithful it is, how long it may be, the production time or how different it will be to each of us and how we imagine it ... but for those of us who are book devotees, this has been long overdue.
Yes there have been other, more faithful adaptations of the book besides 1939, but those have been either foriegn productions or animated series mixed with elements from later books. When you consider that other fantasy stories like "Alice('s Adventures) in Wonderland", "Peter Pan" and "Chronicles of Narnia" have been given big (blockbuster) movie treatments that are faithful to the original text (or even in Netflix series such as "Lemony Snickett", it really does seem unfair that Oz hasn't been properly given the book-series-to-life treatment ... and that is something that's missing.
It is good and, needless to say, Wonderful to be hearing news that sounds like it is going to be more book orientated and not giving the impression that it will be focusiong on something else like "Game of Thrones" of "wicked" or making it something that it isn't.
Speaking for myself, this is something I have dreamed about doing myself for the last 20 years ... and while I have started film-making and scriptwriting and am aware of the difference between page and screen (as well as stage), I am happy that a studio besides Disney or WB is considering giving The Book a feature length film treatment, how much that resembles "the Lord of the Rings" remains to be seen.
While I do not have any control or input in this matter, there are some things I would like to suggest that are absolutely vital:
* Silver Shoes and a YOUNG DOROTHY not a teenager or adolescent. Youngest should be 6, or even 8-10, 12 at oldest. But whether this becomes a series or not and remains a stand-alone, she is supposed to be and IS a little young girl.
It has also been said that Silver is a pure substance, used in mirrors, which would better demonstrate the innocence of Dorothy and her story.
* Casting the WIZARD Character: some excellent choices to consider could be Rowan Atkinson (my definitive choice), or Steve Carell or Patrick Stewart.
* GLINDA's HAIR must be RED, not Blonde or golden, RICH RED hair in ringlets - that is certainly something that is easy to do but always disregarded.
She could be played by Clair Danes, or Famke Jansen - as long as her long hair is rightfully red (to go nicely with her blue eyes and white gown and red palace).
* Not everything has to be CGI; James Ortiz proved that there is plenty puppetry could accomplish, so perhaps NLC could look at "Walking with Dinosaurs" and use puppetry for the Kalidahs and the Giant Spider ... we could even have an Animatronic Tin Woodman instead of a man in a (green/blue motion-capture / tin) suit.
* If you've read books of L Frank Baum, you'd see that the White City of 1893 was cited as the inspiration for the Emerald City ... and if you saw the reference photos, using that as a model for reference would definitely make the city look otherworldly, ethereal, beautifully detailed and timeless and free from somewhat-dated Retro style of the 30s.
* Of course the Good Witches wear white as Baum describes it being a witch colour, but if somehow they can have the Wicked Witches wear white and make it work for them, that would be really impressive!
* the WWW is supposed to be afraid of water, she avoids it, therefore she would be Dried Up (even her blood has done so) and would have to look old - funny enough, Baum never says she's an old lady until the end of the chapter after Dorothy has cleaned away her mess - she cannot and must not have green skin or be flying on a broomstick (cackling isn't necessary), because her fear of water makes constantly holding an umbrella valid ... I repeat, Wicked Witch of the West must be non-green, Old and Dried up (wrinkled in both senses).
* for whatever reason, past adaptations neglect to give the four corners of Oz their colours - Blue East, Yellow West, Purple North and Red South - it's not a difficult thing to do, rather it would add to the splendour and diversity of Oz as well as make the Emerald City center of Oz more prominent with the colour theme.
I'm hoping that we get more good news of this announcement soon, confirming the details of the source material and that, IF it is indeed going to be more focused on the book and historically accurate to the time it was originally written and set in, that it is successful enough to allow for the next and following Oz books to be given similar treatments as well.
While I am interested in seeing how this latest Oz film goes - and if it continues to be developed and hopefully released - I am most interested to see how the Kansas scene opens the film, as that first sequence has the least material described in the book, but should hopefully have plenty of American Farming history to be used as research.
I'm also hoping, I especially WISHING, that Angela Lansbury can play the Good Witch of the North!
Warner Bros. owns New Line Cinema which means the film is free to borrow as much as it likes from the MGM version of Oz. It also seems that this is just the latest iteration of the Todd McFarlane version of Oz announced about a decade ago, although maybe the DNA of that film will be fully scrubbed from the current version. I'd love to see an Oz more like the one Baum wrote about, but that must be harder than it seems since it hasn't happened yet.
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