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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.'"
Correct me if I am wrong, but all 14 original Oz books and the MGM movie are all public domain. As long as you only base you canon on this material, you can make whatever movie you want, and you don't have to pay anyone a dime. Now, the characters name are another matter. Many of those are still trademarked by various corporations.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
All 15 ounce books? I have no idea how many movies that would be?
Weight discrimination again!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why make books that weigh almost one pound into movies?
Is that Hollywood is preparing to shit all over another part of my childhood? 13 times?
Great.
Man, Return to Oz was such a bastardization of "Marvelous Land" and "Ozma" - still, it had more Baum to it than the old MGM "all singing, all dancing" all vomiting wreck.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
A tamer PG movie? What? Am I the only one confused by these statements and modern movies?
I'd hate to be the guy who has to weigh every book to figure out which ones are 15 ounces.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist!)
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.
Excellent! And perhaps they might even be able to get Uwe Boll to direct!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
L. Frank Baum's books have been in the public domain for quite some time now. They're available in Project Gutenberg, on Wikisource and everywhere.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
If you're going to include Thompson, then there are more than 15. Here's wikipedia's list of the "famous forty"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oz_books
Just because they've bought the rights, that doesn't mean they'll actually make the movies. It's extremely common for a studio to buy rights to a book, then never make the movie.
The quality of the Oz books is very uneven. Some of the later ones have long, extremely tedious sections that serve no purpose except to bring back a long list of favorite characters like Jack Pumpkinhead. A lot of the plots revolve around lame puns.
Find free books.
Everyone in the US has the right to make any of those books into a movie.
the Oz books were published between 1900 and 1920. Works published before 1923 are in the public domain. (Mickey was born circa 1928).
Here's my vote that they do Tik-Tok first. My mom had first editions of all the books when I was a kid, that was my favorite.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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. This was missing from the end:
McFarlane and Olson are also planning on releasing a new hip, edgy version of the Care Bears based mostly on Sin City. The "Care Bear Stare" will be reimagined as beam weapons mounted on the bears heads that melt off peoples faces. A sequel of "Milo and Otis" set twenty years later is also scheduled as the newest spin on "Pet Cemetary."
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.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
"... 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.
But do they have the right to title them as "Oz" movies? The copyrights may be expired, but trademarks *never* go away as long as defended.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
That's correct, enjoy them at Project Gutenberg or the Online Books Project at U Penn. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the one by Plumly ...
My work here is dung.
Get progressively sillier, more episodic and more random. Its like Piers Anthony, only possible worse.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I'm saying Woo Hoo!
Jack, we need you, Pumpkin Head!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Given that the title includes the word Oz, that is unlikely to be much of a barrier.
... look like Oz, but would be more like the original typeface that more resembled a zero plus Z.
They could always call it 0Z (chr(13)) instead and it would
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
For those of us who already put up with endless Dorothy and Toto jokes, be afraid, be very afraid...
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
"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."
There's a lot of "children's" tales that weren't originally warm and fuzzy. The Brother's Grimm for example. Plus there's a history of reinterpreting the classics. Alice for example.
Please?
starts scraping the bottom of the barrel, will remake all 8 Police Academy movies.
the Smurfs. There's a pRon (=$$$) story to be told, with all those males and only one Smurfette.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It was closer to books than the original Wizard of Oz!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Also, WB wants Harry and company to always be perfect angels; yet a lot of the character development is due to Harry being a brat some of the time. Harry being a brat makes him more real
They could always call it 0Z (chr(13)) instead and it would
That being said, I don't know if Oz was ever trademarked, and if so if the trademark is still valid. I suspect not, because it was based upon the abbreviation for ounce.
how many movies per pound?
"Dorothy as some bondage queen isn't something I want to do," Olson told Fleming.
He can speak for himself. Red thigh-high stiletto boots work magic for me!
Blank until
I'd think the development of an "Open" movie - much like Blender's Elephant's Dream and Project Peach - only more ambitious, would be more interesting to Slashdot readers.
Given that Oz is ounce and the word Oz has been in common use as a synonym for a foreign country (Australia) since I was a small child, I seriously doubt any trademark would stand up in court.
Even if I did trademark All Of The Above (tm) once.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This time 15 of them!
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28009
I guess Slashdot isn't real journalism, and accuracy is not a concern, so I should just relax and not worry about the fact that the article claims a studio has bought the rights from Tedd Turner to a series of books that are already in the public domain? I guess I shouldn't expect a correction cause, you know, its not important?
Anyone who read the OZ books would realize that they could not be faithfully made into a PG-13 script. The OZ books were strange, whimsical, very silly, and occasionally mind-blowing, but they were not written to be "edgy". Any successful adaptation would have plenty of cool special effects, humor, slapstick, good characterizations, but wouldn't be as action packed as a Harry Potter film, much less the Matrix. Some of the best in the series are over a century old, pre-jazz age. If any of you ever happen to see the original illustrations by John R. Neill, you'll understand that bringing that to the cinema would take the right sort of production team. These yahoos don't sound like they'd fit the bill.
That Baum was writing about monetary reform etc. Oz being ounces, the yellow brick road being gold. Silver slippers etc. Then you have the tin man, scarecrow, munchkins etc representing various facets of society.
Deleted
Do you think they can get Pink Floyd for the sound track?
qz
American McGee is supposed to be doing a film version of his video game American McGee's Alice.
There is some info about it here.
How will these versions compare? American's was very dark and twisted, with Alice emotionally disturbed and borderline insane. Characters were murdered and gruesome experiments were performed on the inhabitants of Wonderland.
Details on the above referenced theory are here
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
sheesh, that's not even a full pound of books.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Sorry couldn't help myself, just read like "all 15 Oz books" like they were meaning book weighing 15 Ounces and not the Oz as content.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I loved Return to Oz as a kid.
And it still holds up today, I think, upon repeat viewing. One thing I like about it, is that it is a little bit dark and exciting. It's chilling when Mombie wakes up without her head. It's creepy at the beginning what Dorothy is about to get electro-shock treatment.
I really take issue with the screen writer here who wants to make something tame. It should be good enough to give kids chills where appropriate... that's what kept me watching it over again as a kid. If it was just a feel good movie, I doubt I'd have enjoyed it much at all.
it's a shame they didn't go for the whole pound.
http://www.hbo.com/oz/episode/season1/01_routine.s html
Any chance of making the above Oz in to a movie?
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dark Side of the Oz or something?
Nah, that was years ago. That sound you're hearing is the scraping of desperate fingernails on the bedrock far below where the barely-remembered barrel used to be.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I'd love to see an authentic depiction of the story rated at least PG-13. I want see the woodsman get hacked to pieces with his enchanted axe (cursed by the Wicked Witch of the East) before being rebuilt as the Tin Man. I want to see the Lion fight off the tiger-bear beasts and kill the giant spider. I want to see the Tin Man slaughter the 40 wolves of the Witch, and the Scarecrow wring the necks of the 40 crows. It would have been cool to see Tim Burton make this. Johnny Depp could have played one of the flying monkeys.
This is my signature. soid st egr.hyTa rsiugm usnin Any questions?
of course everything will be extensively reworked, to achieve the proper balance between the political correctness and maximizing the profits. blah ... by coincidence, i've picked up the OZ omnibus about a few months ago, and been reading it since. uneven, of course, but there is a certain charm in each story. old-fashioned charm we surely won't see in WB version.
Australia needs some culture, fast.
Property is theft.
What in the world is the movie coming to?
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
I read a few of them when I was young, they were pretty good. I can't wait to see what they do.
The Wizard of Oz stories were Midwestern socialist allegories. Warner, the great media corporation, will surely not make any movie "faithful" to that theme.
But since the books' copyright expired in 1956, anyone who wants will be free to make an adaptation telling a socialist story, promoted by the same hype machine Warner uses to turn its "property" into a huge moneymaker.
--
make install -not war
speaking of plugs -- you should also check librivox.org if you want public domain texts as audio books.... if they don't have a book you want, then record it for them!
But what do we do with the really, really, heavy books? :>
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
So either that or Ozzie and Harriet...s -selling-solar.html
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Am I the only one here thinking GPL movie with all these posts on public domain?
The game.
I don't believe it was necessary to buy the rights, but that all depends.
If you simply wish to base your movies on the public domain books, you don't need any rights.
If you wish to incorporate any of the concepts or stylings of the Judy Garland version of the movie, then you do.
There is a third possibility that they wished to avoid any potential lawsuits. Whether or not MGM had legal right to sue this movie production, perhaps it was easier just to pay them a modest sum not to worry about it. A good example would be Winnie the Pooh.
AA Milne created Winnie the Pooh, and his family claims they own the rights to said characters. Disney owns the rights to their trademarked versions of Winnie the Pooh, but last time I checked Disney went one step further and claimed since their version was more well-known, thusly they should own all rights to the character. MGM could make the same argument for The Wizard of Oz. Very few people seem to know much about the book, or even that it differs greatly from the movie, but everyone recognizes the movie, and the iconic imagery from it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
. . . the later books are in color. :)
hawk
Eight justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have ruled that trademarks cannot be used to extend the term of exclusive rights in a work whose U.S. copyright has expired. Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003).
Sadly, in Canada the opposite is true. Anne of Green Gables is in the public domain but the author's heirs and the government of PEI used some kind of trademark law loophole to keep a monopoly on it.
I was _so_ certain warner bros was turning all 15 ounce books into movies that I got out the scales and started weighing my library.
"My pitch was How do we get people who went to Lord of the Rings to embrace this? McFarlane said. " Easy, stay the hell away from these movies you corporate whore.
I was definitely confused as to what the books' weights had to do with anything...
Aikon-
It was 2 or 3 weeks ago that my bookstore-owning uncle was telling me how, when the Oz series was first popular, it had the same sort of frenzy that now surrounds Harry Potter. Kids loved it, parents read it too sometimes, nutcases decried it as anti-Christian...
There's gotta be quite a few books that weigh that 15 ounces! But how accurate the weight has to be? Is 15,1 ounces too much an 14,9 ounces too little?
...never mind...
Now, you might say that you can't get too much of a plot in 15 ounce book, but just look at what they've gottten out recently...
OH! It's not ounce, but Wizard of OZ...
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
I found some photos of one of Todd McFarlane's toys, Dorothy looks freakin hot!0 5
http://www.spawn.com/toys/product.aspx?product=33
TIAEAE!
I caught a few episodes of the TV series, but I just can't work it out. It's set in a maximum security prison and there's no sign of Dorothy, Toto, the lion or the others. It was good, but I just can't make the link.
Since they're not going to be faithful to the original books anyway, why not do a more modern sequel, Like PJ Farmer's A Barnstormer in Oz (See pjfarmer.com for info), about Dorothy's son who flies his biplane into Oz and has his own series of adventures, rather more adult. Farmer has done many stories reimagining pulp heroes like Tarzan, Doc Savage, etc.
Hooray, 14 dreary, watered-down, condescending children's movies to look forward to! Hu-fucking-zah! Willy Deppa and the Gratutious Edginess Factory just wasn't edutainment enough! Who needs new ideas, anyway - children and families alike love recycled shit!
Please, if any major film producers are reading this message - could you guys desecrate Alice in Wonderland next? It could really benefit from being "hipped up" for a contemporary audience (I'm thinking Raven as Alice), and since test audiences are likely to be confused or irritated by all those puns, it'd probably be best to cut them all out. Oh, and I'm thinking Linkin Park for the Very Happy Unbirthday number.
What!!? A slashdotter who hasn't seen Donnie Darko - who let you on? :-)
Smurfs are asexual you insensitive clod!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
There are a great many more than 15 Oz books. "All 15" is way off. There are forty canonical titles, and hundreds more non-canonical titles. For more details, see the Books of Oz database, which currently lists 740 entries, and has probably missed some. Since the first one was printed in 1900, that's a rate of about 6.91 Oz books per year. Of course, not all of them are equally good. The first fourteen are good, and so are most of Ruth Plumley Thompson's sequels, but after that the quality varies widely. I did rather like "Mr. Tinker in Oz" by James Howe (who also wrote the Bunnicula series). And avoid "The Yellow Knight of Oz," it stinks.
The Doom Bears:n t_Ninja_Turtles_organisations#Doom_Bears
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Teenage_Muta
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Well,at least Disney won't be f**king up these stories too!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
So, how many books weigh 15 oz, exactly?
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
So my first glance at the title made absolutely no sense - all books that weigh in at 450 grams should be made into movies? That would include HP7! :-)
Here may be the perfect vehicle for recreating with cutting edge 3D character techniques an artificial Judy/Dorothy. The scarecrow, lion, not to mention the tin man, should be almost trivial at this point. There
are voice actors (of various original gender) that could do excelent renditions of Judy's singing voice
for new songs.
Why stop at 15, in a few years we could have The OZ Channel!
Are they going to remake Take It Big?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Are 16oz. books too heavy to turn into movies?
I wrote parts of this stuff
Wicked!
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Is there a place to download ALL the books (or at least the original 14) in audio format at once? Even the archive.org links break up each book into multiple files....this would be awesome to listen to at work!
The 15th Oz book (the first by Thompson) is also in the public domain. Evidentally the 16th is as well (published in 1922--not sure why it's not mentioned). This is why they are doing the Royal Book as well.
The summary is wrong in that they didn't buy the rights to the first 15. Evidentally they bought the rights to the 1939 movie (some time ago) and plan to adapt the public domain books.
I've heard that some of Thompson's later books are public domain as well because she didn't bother to renew them, but I don't know which ones.
Ok, it just took a little re-reading to interpret that, but that was my first impression of the title.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
All the Baum Oz books, as well as the first half-dozen Plumly Oz books, are public domain!
That means the "rights" that Ted Turner sold to these bozos are also public domain. Anyone can
write an Oz script and film it as a movie. The new movie - a "derived work" - would be subject to our
effectively-eternal copyright laws. But the original books and any rights derived from them are public
domain. But there is one loophole through which these...people...can pull this crap.
The "Tarzan" bozos pull much the same stunt by (eternally, since there is no time limit) trademarking
the name "Tarzan". To be able to market any movie with "Tarzan" in the title requires licensing it
from the Burroughs heirs for big bucks, even if most of the Tarzan books are public domain. Turner
undoubtedly sold the trademark he got with the 1939 Judy Garland "Wizard of Oz". This is the kind of
quasi-legal bullshit that has become the defacto metho for yanking public domain material back under
the control, if not the actual copyright, of these large corporations.
This crap makes my blood boil...
I know you're being funny, but PF *did* do several movie soundtracks: a forgettable hippie movie called More but also "Tonite Let's All Make Love in London", "Zabriskie Point", obviously "The Wall", "La Vallee" (same director/feel as "More"), and the documentaries "Live at Pompeii" and "La Carrera Panamerica".
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
"It would have been cool to see Tim Burton make this. Johnny Depp could have played one of the flying monkeys.
After seeing his performance as Willy Wonka, I'd cast him as the Wicked Witch of the West, personally.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
My parents are that kind of nutcases - never even read HP or even seen the movies but they know it's pure evil because their Baptist church showed them a sensationalized film casting HP as real witchcraft and devil worship. Of course they could never understand my arguments that they raised their kids watching Wizard of Oz and all kinds of similar stuff. Retarded church groups that need to create witch hunts to feel okay about themselves.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.