Warner Bros. to Turn All 15 Oz Books Into Movies

Lucas123 writes "After purchasing the rights to the Oz books from Ted Turner Warner Bros., along with Village Roadshow Pictures, will be taking Spawn creator Todd McFarlane's idea to produce movies based on the Oz books. They've obtained the rights to the 14 titles written by 'The Wizard of Oz' author L. Frank Baum, as well as the the fifteenth book ('The Royal Book of Oz'), written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. Screen Writer John Olson's 'vision is of a bit tamer PG movie and hopefully the two can find some middle ground of compromise that will please them both and not hurt the final product.'"

Hollywood thinking

[taustin]

"... hopefully the two can ... compromise ... and not hurt the final product.'"

That they can even say this with a straight face is why movies suck.

Re:Public Domain

[Erasmus]

Mickey Mouse is a trademark. The character will never slide into the Public Domain so long as Disney is defending it.

Mickey Mouse cartoons, on the other hand, will never slide into the Public Domain so long as Disney keeps paying congress to extend the copyright length...

Re:So what you're telling me...

[Original Replica]

I saw it in the theater when I was six years old. Pretty heavy stuff at that age...the living bodyless heads were especially striking. My parents expected something entirely different.

It might have been heavy stuff as compared the Wizard of Oz movie, but in the books Dorothy or Ozma were quite regularly in serious danger and dealing with bizarre perhaps horrific things. I don't really see why your parents were suprised. Then again if you made a movie based on most fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm it would have to be rated "R" for violence. But most parents just assume that stories for kids of 80 years ago are going to be just fine with their modern ideas of how to raise a child.

Re:Public Domain

[tverbeek]

All of the Oz books published before 1923 are public domain in the US, because every copyright from that period had expired before the Congress started rubber-stamping renewals. Everything L. Frank Baum wrote (at least by himself) has been in the public domain in the EU since the end of 1989 (70 years after he died). Likewise with the original character designs by illustrator W. W. Denslow, who died in 1915. However, the MGM movie (produced in 1939) and everything original that was introduced by it (e.g. "Somewhere....") is very much under copyright in the US and the EU (and probably everywhere else, since most countries follow one or the other model).

The only thing that could still be "owned" about the original books are the trademark rights, which could be maintained indefinitely if they're continually exercised. I'm pretty sure MGM has done its job in maintaining "The Wizard of Oz" and the distinctive likenesses of Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, Bolger, Haley, Lahr, etc. as trademarks, and they're powerful enough to get away with claiming just "Oz" as a trademark if they set their legal will to it.

The bottom line is that anyone could produce a bunch of movies based on the books without buying the rights from anyone... but they'd have a really dicey time marketing it without running into MGM's trademark enforcement suits.

They'll either be unfaithful or uncinematic

[dpbsmith]

The Oz books are not very cinematic.

The 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz was almost an original creation. It was a success, not because of L. Frank Baum's story, but because of its wonderful performers, wonderful music, wonderful art direction, and interesting script. At least half of the cherished elements of the movie have no parallels in the original.

OK, so they have the Oz books, but have they got a Harold Arlen and a Ray Bolger and a Judy Garland?

Great material doesn't guarantee a great movie. Don't forget, there was also a Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings.

Re:Public Domain

[Pxtl]

That makes sense. Obviously, they want to be able to reference the changes that were made in the movie since the movie version is what's stuck in the public consciousness. I remember when I saw Wicked, she was confused about the crystal shoes, wondering why they weren't the "ruby slippers" of of the movie - I had to explain that the "ruby slippers" were a feature exclusive to the film version, which the creators of Wicked likely didn't have the rights to. They probably want to be able to avoid that problem, so they're getting the movie rights too.

Re:Missing some of the review

[kabocox]

"McFarlane has a vision of Oz that is a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight," wrote journalist Michael Fleming. "That was clear with a toy line he launched several years ago that featured a buxom Dorothy and Toto re-imagined as an over-sized snarling warthog.

While nothing else is really complete, these two want to assure you that the plan to replace every warm, fuzzy childhood story with nightmarish tales so that you'll lose all sense of past and therefore be willing to watch anything is proceeding according to plan and scheduled to be complete by the year 2015.

Hey, Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland were the two most scary horror filled movies that I had to suffer through. Both movies are a walk through some one's drug trip. The horror in wizard of Oz starts with killing off an old woman, whom the munchkins claim is a witch and then the evil little girl not happy with killing off one member of the family goes and kills the old woman's sister as well. Oh, and the horror of fly monkeys, walking scare crows, a lion, and the Wizard's city. I'm sorry, but McFarlane was just honestly showing the Wizard of Oz as an honest remake as I recall the movie. Alice in the Drug trip was the other horror flick, but I'm just not going there that world was scary.