American McGee To Adapt Oz As Movie

Ant writes "According to ShackNews and Hollywood Reporter, American McGee's "Oz" is back on track in several ways. Infogrames dropped the Wizard of Oz based videogame a while ago, but it's being revived now that McGee will be writing an Oz movie script for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. McGee said: "The hero of the story, a teenage boy named Arthur, is whisked away from Earth to an Oz in turmoil. Like Neo in 'The Matrix' films, the boy makes a hero's journey and comes to grips with his powers," he said. "What Jerry Bruckheimer was able to do with 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was simply brilliant, and since 'Oz' is similar in tone to that film franchise, I'd like to follow that model.""

Comments

Re:Anybody remembers Alice?

[lhouk281]

From American McGee's website, http://www.americanmcgee.com/blosxom.cgi/home/

wow, do people ever want to know what's up with the alice film. well, here's the full story: while an employee of electronic arts i conceived of and produced "american mcgee's alice". this meant that i (along with my exec producer rj berg) wrote the story, drove the art style, choose the development team, managed the development process, yadda, yadda. as an employee of ea i didn't "own" the idea even though i created it.

for me alice was more than just a game, it was an attempt to prove to ea that we could create original properties and exploit them in markets other than games. it seemed to me then (and even more now) that the games industry shouldn't rely solely on hollywood for their game ideas and more importantly, that we as an industry could come up with ideas that hollywood would make into movies. i've now come to realize that game publishers care less about original ideas than they do "pre-sold awareness" (ie, someone else's marketing dollars)... but that's a topic for another day.

so... before the game was completed i (along with two film producers i knew at the time) pitched the idea of an alice movie to dimension films. bob weinstien (head of the studio) bought the idea "in the room" based on a 30 second film-esque trailer and nothing more. then began "the fun". well known screenwriter john august was brought in to write a film treatment, which he did. the treatment was great. somehow the studio neglected to notice it. john went off to work on something else. the studio then wanted him on the project. too late. after that literally dozens of writers took various stabs at ideas for the film story. apparently they couldn't just go with the original story from the game. wes craven was brought in to direct. things seemed to happen. then nothing happened for a long time. then more nothing. then in typical hollywood style the film studio became displeased with those film producers i mentioned earlier and vice versa. no one was friends anymore. the alice film project was dead in the water because of the relationship between studio and producers. nice. even more nothing happened.

then recently... the film rights moved to a new studio, fox. they, like everyone else in hollywood that i've talked to, love the project, are going to make it, blah, blah, blah. there are new producers attached to the project. its status is "in development". that's it, that's all i know. personally, i think an oz film will get made before alice sees the light of day.

now, no more questions about this. i don't know anything else. i *really* don't know who's going to direct, who's playing alice, when the movie is coming out, or if there will even be a movie for that matter. these things can sometimes take years. be patient... and to pass the time lets play a game called "who can go the longest without asking american a question related to the alice film". ready? go!

Re:Not True To The Original

[TheWanderingHermit]

Try reading the books. I never said anything about the movie (and I'm referring ONLY to the 1939 movie, with Judy Garland, not any of the others).

Oh, and as a small point of trivia, when, in the movie, you see the Witch prepare to order the Flying Monkeys, notice that the monkey with her hands her a strange hat. That's a small reference to an important point in the book (that matters later in the book, but not in the movie). The monkeys were not grotesque and were not evil. Whoever had possession of the magic hat could control the monkeys 3 times. The only reason they followed the witch's orders were because of the hat.

And in the book the witches were not as frightening. Mean, but not nearly the threat they were in the movie. Miss Gulch, who wanted to kill Toto, was NEVER in the book. There was hardly any development of the Kansas characters in the book (including the Professor who, in Oz, was the Wizard and other characters). In the book, it is also NOT a dream.

There are a HUGE number of liberties taken in the movie that have nothing to do with the book. There is also a LOT that was omitted from the movie, like what happened to the other characters at the end. (And one last point of trivia: as I said, in the books, Oz is NOT a dream. It is real and in the 5th book, when Uncle Henry realizes the farm is failing, Dorothy has them all transported to Oz where Uncle Henry and Auntie Em run a farm in Munchkinland from then on.)