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Posts Tagged ‘Gregory Maguire’

OZ And The Argument To Reboot

L. Frank Baum‘s classic, The Wizard of OZ is one of the most remade, and rethought properties around. You’ll often hear genre fans go bonkers when they learn that their favorite TV show, or movie is being remade. Its true, Hollywood often screws up… yet at the same time, sometimes while it tinkers about with existing material it does make new classics, the Judy Garland version of The Wonderful Wizard of OZ is proof of this, itself a new version of silent movies based on OZ that preceded it.

And they’re still redoing OZ, on both screen, and in print. The James Franco, Disney version OZ: The Great, and Powerful as seen in the trailer below looks pretty good. There’s also The Wicked Years Series by Gregory Maguire, and these new takes in no way diminish the source material. They in my view, serve to enhance it.

Not only did L. Frank Baum give the world a classic, but he opened the doors for other artists to jump off from his vision, be it: Tin Man on Syfy, or a stage show with Jewel Kilcher as Dorothy Gale, OZ has become its own canvas for artists of all stripes to paint upon.

This is where I work into the blog post that I intend my own take on OZ. Luckily the existing canon is filled with many interesting female characters.  I can tell you my version is going to lean toward a science fiction version of OZ with a lot of steampunk thrown in. Other than that I need to think it out a bit more.