As if the Wheelers weren't scary enough, Warner Bros and producer Todd McFarlane want to take us all back to Oz again - and this time it ain't all going to be ruby slippers and singing scarecrows.
The pitch for this take on Frank L. Baum's classic series of books is to make things a little darker (although the writer, A History of Violence's Josh Olson, says he's thinking "Harry Potter dark, not Seven dark"), without so many singing Munchkins. McFarlane is describing this as a "dark, edgy, muscular PG -13", although Olson is arguing for a slightly tamer PG and says it's more of a sequel than a remake.
McFarlane, for those of you struggling to figure out why you know his name, is the producer and writer behind Spawn, but don't lets hold that against him. After all, he's a talented comic-book artist and...well, everyone deserves a second chance. He's had an interest in Oz for ages, having brought out a rather twisted toy range several years ago with a busty Dorothy and an enormous, snarling Toto. Er. Let's not hold that against him either, eh?
Olson, in any case, has said he has no interest in portraying Dorothy as a "bondage queen", which is nice, and cited the wealth of characters and imagination on offer in the 15 Oz books as the thing he's focusing on. McFarlane, meanwhile, wants to get The Lord of the Rings' audience to come see this, by giving it a "2007 wow factor". "You’ve still got Dorothy trapped in an odd place, but she’s much closer to the Ripley from ‘Alien’ than a helpless singing girl," he says. Ripley? Er. OK.
Olson says that his approach is largely to create his own plot, but using Baum's characters - and for all the worrying disagreement that seems to be bubbling under between writer and producer, this could be a good thing. After all, The Wizard of Oz may be one of the best, and best-loved, films ever made, but it is itself a remake, so we can't hold this project's somewhat dubious start against it - can we? And scary-ass Wheelers or not, everyone kinda loves Return To Oz in a 1980s, Fairuza Balk kinda way. Right?