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Hello, Yellow Brick Road? Hollywood ponders a return to ‘Oz’

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Steven Zeitchik is the wizard of Hollywood scoops at the 24 Frames blog, and one of the most intriguing ones is about Hollywood producers with over-the-rainbow aspirations...

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Fresh off Disney’s massive success with Tim Burton’sAlice in Wonderland,’ Warner Bros. wants to remake another childhood classic. Like, really classic.

The studio is examining two existing ‘Wizard of Oz’ projects, with an eye toward giving one of them a modern gloss and moving it toward the screen.

One project, called ‘Oz,’ currently lives at Warner’s New Line label. It’s being produced by Temple Hill, which is behind a little franchise called ‘Twilight,’ and has a script written by Darren Lemke, a writer on the upcoming ‘Shrek Forever After.’

A second ‘Wizard of Oz’ project, set up at Warners proper, skews a little darker -- it’s written by ‘A History of Violence’ screenwriter Josh Olson and focuses on a granddaughter of Dorothy who returns to Oz to fight evil. ‘Clash of the Titans’ producer Basil Iwanyk and his Thunder Road Pictures are behind that one. (‘Spawn’ creator Todd MacFarlane is potentially involved in a producer capacity, to give you some idea of the tone.)

While the idea of a new ‘Wizard of Oz’ movie is said to be in the development, let’s-bat-this-around stage, it’s been advanced seriously enough on the lot that representatives for some of the top directors around Hollywood have been briefed...

THERE’S MORE, READ THE REST

-- Steve Zeitchik

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