It’s official: Hollywood has run out of new ideas. The latest remake of an untouchable classic is in the works at Warner Bros. with Black-ish creator Kenya Barris set to write and direct a “modern reimagining” of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
With every IP under the sun getting remade and rebooted in the last few years, the internet is questioning the need for a new take on such a beloved classic. One Twitter user is already dreading what a “modernized” Wizard of Oz might look like. “Is Emerald City New York now? Will there be ruby Jordans? Will the Tin Man be the Tesla Man?” user paulswhtn wrote.
Considering Warner Bros. owns the rights to the 1939 movie, but not the book it is based on, this remake is a separate film from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz screen adaptation announced early last year, which will be directed by Nicole Kassell and is described as a “fresh take” on the famous children’s story. It begs the question of if there’s really a need for two new movies essentially based on the same tale.
To be completely fair, neither Barris nor Kassell’s upcoming Wizard of Oz remakes marks the first modernized version of L. Frank Baum’s classic 1900 children’s novel, as one Twitter user points out. Motown’s 1978 take on Dorothy’s yellow brick road travels The Wiz, or Broadway musical Wicked are some of the successful reinterpretations of the story, which most people seem to love.
“If it ain’t The Wiz 2 I don’t want it,” user KennyFox argued, adding that the Diana Ross and Michael Jackson-led musical film from the 70s is even better than Judy Garland’s 30s classic.
Whether it is an honest opinion or an ironic funny tweet, it’s up for interpretation, but one user’s personal favorite “modern day Wizard of Oz remake” is the 2005 television movie The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz, starring Ashanti as Dorothy and Queen Latifah as her aunt, and even featuring a Quentin Tarantino cameo alongside Kermit the Frog. Really, what more could you ask for?
Even if there have been a few actually great reimaginings of Oz’s world, the odds could be stacked up against the two upcoming productions, considering, as user jfthelolzor mentions, there have been more failures than victories throughout movie history. Some of these include the 2013 animated film Legends of Oz, Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful, and Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz.
Little is known about Kenya Barris or Nicole Kassell’s movies as yet, but a marathon of every Wizard of Oz production mentioned above could get Oz fans either hyped or terrified for what’s to come.