Todd McFarlane Talks About his Twisted WIZARD OF OZ Film
There has been a lot of talk lately about Todd FcFarlane and a few of his projects. In the last couple weeks he announced he's started his new Spawn movie script, he said we can expect the Spawn animated series back in 2010, and that Dakota Fanning might play Dorothy in in his version of The Wizard of Oz. It's hard to take what McFarlane say's seriously because he has let his fans down so many times and has been talking about these projects for years. But Empire recently asked him a few questions about his Wizard of Oz film which he gladly answered.
McFarlane on the start date being early next year:
We're in Hollywood, so you have to predicate all statements of that sort with "our intent would be..." I'm sure the higher-ups at Warner Bros. would like to have it on their schedule, and they're probably moving in that direction. But we've seen in our lifetime thousands of cases where things don't go according to plan, right?
On the state of the script:
They're on their second iteration right now, trying to get it into a zone that makes sense. Josh Olsen wrote a draft that didn't quite strike Warners fancy. Everyone was a little lukewarm. They wanted it more sexy! So they were going to do a rewrite and get some fresh eyes on it.
On the story being based around Dorothy's granddaughter:
The first draft had those elements. Will they remain? Can't be sure.
On filming in Britain:
That's putting the cart before the horse. That depends on what kind of budget comes in, where the confidence level is for the studio execs, where they’ll have the most success stretching their dollars...
On Dakota Fanning as Dorothy:
I haven't heard that. If we just do a sugary sweet Dorothy that everybody has seen over and over for 50 years, as far as I'm concerned, that's too obvious. I'm happy to go with whoever will get the most people in the seats, but sometimes that can change from month to month.
On going "dark":
I think my "Twisted" version is a little scary for Warners to embrace. I essentially pitched Lord of the Rings. It was big, it was bold and it wasn't a very pretty place. It was badass! There’s no Baum in it at all. When they bought it from me, my thing was, turn off the MGM mindset. It's a public domain property, let's go invent some cool new ideas, which basically will surprise people. What's going to get a new generation to go look at Oz is if you reinvent it on some level. Not every single level, but some of them have to be new. Shut down your preconceived notions. For me, you should be looking at an isolated movie, that, oh, by the way, happens to be Oz. To get the new audience you're going to have to put some edges on this thing. My version would rock! But they're all like, "We're spending $100m here, we can't go totally nuts, Todd!" So I've told them that the movie I like is the one they're willing to make!
Is he desperate to get this movie off the ground or what? That last statement he made just sounds incredibly desperate, am I wrong in assuming that? Regardless, I think it would be cool to see McFarlanes Oz come to life on the big screen. I love the designs that he had come up with for this new Oz world. What are your thoughts?
Here are some more of the toys that the movie will be based off of. The top photo is of Dorothy, I don't see Dakota Fanning in that role.
