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.'"

Comments

How many?

[Anonymous Coward]

All 15 ounce books? I have no idea how many movies that would be?

Re:How many?

[dr_dank]

Just the important ones.

Deep voice movie announcer guy

This summer...

WHOOSH

There is another word for EXCITEMENT!

Roget's Thesaurus: The Motion Picture

Re:How many?

[clickety6]

Shouldn't that be:

Roget's Thesaurus: The Motion Picture, Feature Film, Movie, Moving Picture, Flick, Cinematic Entertainment

Missing some of the review

[fireboy1919]

"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.

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.

Re:Public Domain

[fm6]

It's yet another sloppy summary of TFA, which mentions two distinct facts:

• Warner plans to adapt all 15 books.
       
• Warner bought the rights to the 1939 movie from Ted Turner. (Actually, they bought Ted Turner's whole media operation, which happened to include his film library, which happened to include this movie. This happened over 10 years ago; it's connection with this announcement isn't clear.)
  

The writer of the TFA was a little sloppy, and the submitter was very sloppy, so of course the facts got a bit jumbled. Welcome to Slashdot.

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.