Considering Hollywood’s innate love of franchises, it ranks as a minor miracle that it took this long for someone to once again dip into L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” mythology. After all, 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz” is the most-watched movie of all time, according to the Library of Congress.
The last big-screen release was Disney’s half-hearted “Return to Oz,” a 1985 sequel to the Judy Garland film, which flopped. At least eight recent adaptations have been trapped in various levels of development hell.
Now Disney takes a reported $200 million gamble on Friday’s “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a mostly original story about how the wizard first got to that faraway land — years before he met Dorothy. While this new “Oz” fills in some of the back story from the 1939 film and features some of the same characters, it’s not a straight prequel, partly for legal reasons.
The stories from Baum’s 14-book series, first published in 1900, are now in the public domain and free for the taking. But the 1939 musical is controlled by Warner Bros., which also owns the copyright on that film’s versions of Baum’s characters, a court ruled last year.
“As long as we use material from his books, then we don’t infringe upon the 1939 movie,” says producer Joe Roth, who successfully brought two other public-domain tales to theaters: 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland” and 2012’s “Snow White and the Huntsman.”
Despite the legal tangles, Oz is a world ripe for plundering. “Oz the Great and Powerful” director Sam Raimi isn’t sure why no one has made a successful adaptation recently.
“I could guess that people are so enamored of the great classic film, they’re afraid to get near it,” he says. “They’re afraid they’ll fail in the light of its blinding brilliance. They don’t want to offend fans.”
Raimi, Roth and the writers certainly felt a bit of that trepidation. They thought it foolhardy to try and produce music as memorable as “Over the Rainbow.” “Oz the Great and Powerful” is not a musical.
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The new “Oz” story centers on Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a con man and magician who works at a traveling circus. After getting swept away by a tornado, he finds himself transported to Oz, where he’s mistaken for a prophesied savior who will free the inhabitants from a wicked witch.
Upon his arrival, Diggs meets three magical women: sisters Theodora (Mila Kunis) and Evanora (Rachel Weisz), and Glinda (Michelle Williams), the good witch played by Billie Burke in the 1939 movie. Various adventures and a great battle follow, showing us how Diggs ultimately becomes that wizard behind the curtain. “The things that needed to be revisited — the Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City and the witches and flying monkeys and that kind of thing — [are] all there,” Franco says. “But in other ways, there are many fresh things here.”
One key way this sort-of prequel differs from the Garland movie is that the trip to Oz is not a figment of imagination. The 1939 film invented Dorothy’s dream as a way to bookend the film. The new film’s design also differs from the original.
“The absolute saturation of color is similar, but the theatricality of [the original], with the backgrounds, scrims and backdrop painting, to me, they seem like completely different things,” Raimi says. “Oz the Great and Powerful” was meant to look more modern. “Entering Oz is like entering another dimension,” Raimi adds. “The colors are more beautiful, the fragrances are more exotic. Yet we wanted to make it photo-real. We wanted to make it seem like it really existed.”
The movie was shot in a old Michigan truck plant that had been converted into a film studio. Production designer Robert Stromberg and the crew designed 24 full sets plus several partial ones. To create the Dark Forest, where Diggs first encounters Glinda, the production team used branches from an orchard full of dead peach trees, discovered nearby.
Raimi says creating Oz virtually would have been cheaper than building the giant sets, but he thought it was important for the actors to really believe they were in the magical land. The elaborate costumes also helped. Williams and Weisz each got to give input on what their outfits would look like. “Sam kind of let me go — it was like part of my process,” Weisz says. “It was me finding my desire to be a queen.” According to the movie’s costume designer Gary Jones, the witches’ dresses also matched their scenes — frillier garb for the talkier scenes, darker and more streamlined clothing for battle.
And we see in the costumes pictured here, the clothes reveal more than a few secrets about how these sisters aren’t always what they seem.
Somebody, after all, becomes Dorothy’s nemesis, the Wicked Witch of the West, as portrayed in the new film’s posters.
Evanora: Rachel Weisz
Costume designer Jones created clothing that matches the characters’ states of mind, and also foreshadows plot twists. For Evanora, he designed two nearly identical dresses — one in green and one in black.
“The green dress is because she is an [official] of Emerald City when the movie starts,” says Jones. Later, her dress is black as “a recognition between good and evil.”
The retro-looking dress with a bolero was accessorized with tons of coque feathers that were sourced from a Pennsylvania farm, and an iridescent cape for her flying scenes. “It gave her volume, helped her fly and enhanced the silhouette,” says Jones of the cape.
“Evanora definitely has the glamour of the ’30s and ’40s in her repertoire,” says Jones, who called the gowns made from silk chiffon, Swarovski beads and silk charmeuse by far the most intricate of the costumes.
Glinda: Michelle Williams
“She’s the one person we know from the other movie, so we wanted to have recognition immediately,” says Jones, who put her in creamy whites and coque feathers dipped in silver and gold.
Her second dress has a bodice that resembles a breast plate and body armor because she’s fighting for good over evil, but she still has an ethereal quality with the feathers and gauzy skirts. “The idea was warrior princess. The strength of the character was what we wanted to come through. We wanted her to be likable and strong.”
The second costume retained an armor-like quality but with sequins and feathers, while the third look has a bit more frivolity in its silhouette with a high-low hem and lots of beaded embellishments.
The Wicked Witch of the West
Imagine trying to create the Wicked Witch of the West — a character so seared into our cultural consciousness — without warts, green skin or any of the creative flair of the 1939 MGM movie. “There were some things that were off-limits, legally,” says makeup artist Howard Berger. “At one point there was a mandate that the wicked witch could not be green. That was the hardest part because you think, ‘I know what the wicked witch looks like.’ ”
Berger toyed around with a few concepts until finally creating a green palatable to copyright. Using a combination of MAC cosmetics and tattoo colors from Bluebird Inks, he found one with elements of burnt sienna and yellows. The makeup process for the unnamed actress — no spoilers here! — who will morph into the wicked witch: The whole transformation, from full facial prosthetics, minus the lips, to twisted dentures, contact lenses, witch fingers and a green airbrushing, took 90 minutes each day.
Theodora: Mila Kunis
Jones calls Theodora’s two costumes the most “current,” and it’s easy to see why. When we first meet her, she’s sultry but naive in a riding coat and jodhpurs.
“Her riding jacket has a full bottom that looks like a peplum, and the trousers are skinnier with a romantic neckline,” says Jones of Kunis’ getup, inspired by Oz’s landscape and romantic paintings of the 19th century.
Back at the palace, Theodora slips into something a little less comfortable — a
hand-painted, strapless silk organza evening gown complete with voluminous crimson sleeves.
“Certainly her evening gown has reflections of what we’re seeing now,” says Jones, careful to note that the dramatic dress was not directly influenced by any current runway look, but he wanted it to be strapless and have a “fairy-tale quality” to it.
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