Raimi Offered Reigns to Oz, The Great And Powerful

News, Projects

Director Sam Raimi has apparently emerged over the likes of Sam Mendes and Adam Shankman as Disney’s top choice for Oz, the Great and Powerful, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz currently in development.

According to Vulture, an offer has gone out to Raimi to direct a script by Mitchell Kapner that details the rise in power of a simple Kansas charlatan who is transported to Oz and becomes it’s great wizard. Robert Downey, Jr. is currently attached to star in the film.

Oz, the Great and Powerful is one of several Oz-related projects currently in one level of development or another. John Olson, the writer of A History of Violence, has a script in the works at Warner Bros. that may or may not have anything to do with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane’s Twisted Land of Oz toyline.

Oz, another script at Warner Brothers, is being written by Darren Lemke and shepherded by Twilight producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey.

While the offer may have gone out to Raimi to direct Oz, the Great and Powerful, it is not known at this time if he would even accept. After being booted off the fourth Spider-Man film at Sony, Raimi has been mulling over several projects, including a World of Warcraft feature for Warner Bros.

The Buzz: A lifelong fan of Sam Raimi, I’d like to see him attach himself to something, anything — just so I can look forward to watching another Sam Raimi movie in the not-to-distant future. While I’ve never been too much of a fan of The Wizard of Oz, a Raimi/Downey Jr. team-up could be fun to watch.

I imagine it would at least have some pretty wicked looking flying monkeys.

While the Oz project would not be my top choice for Sam Raimi’s next movie (neither would World of Warcraft, for that matter), something is better than nothing.

What say you? Would you like to see Raimi take on the world of L. Frank Baum?

Robert Saucedo is an avid movie watcher with seriously poor sleeping habits. The Mikey from Life cereal of film fans, Robert will watch just about anything — good, bad or ugly. He has written about film for newspapers, radio and online for the last 10 years. This has taken a toll on his sanity — of that you can be sure. Follow him on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500.