The Wizard of Oz is a pure classic and the original should never be touched, however the movie is filled to the brim with take off possibilities and it looks like th Sci-Fi Channel is going to try and snatch some gold from the yellow brick road. The good people over at darkhorizons.com give us this on Sci Fi’s move toward OZ:
The network has given a green light to “Tin Man”, a six-hour original miniseries described as wild SF reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” reports Sci-Fi Wire.
The story follows DG, a young woman plucked from her humdrum life and thrust into The Outer Zone (the O.Z.), a fantastical realm filled with wonder, but oppressed by dark magic. DG discovers her true identity, battles evil winged monkey-bats and attempts to fulfill her destiny. Ultimately, DG’s destiny leads her to a showdown with the wicked sorceress Azkadellia, whose ties to DG are closer than anyone could have imagined.
This project is written by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle, shooting is slated to begin early 2007 in Vancouver with a December 2007 release set.
There have actually been quite a few attempts, successful and otherwise of bringing Oz to television if you click here you can see them, my personal favorite is The Muppet’s do The Wizard of Oz where Miss Piggy played all four witches.
This sounds pretty good. I mean it could be completely terrible but at a first glance this gets me interested. A sci-fi take on OZ, I can dig it.
What might work well is if they involve aspects of OZ that always felt sci-fi anyway. Like the little people, to me they always seemed very alien having these little people among Dorothy. Or the ruby slippers don’t hold a spell they are actually made out of special crystals that could power a whole universe, and here Dorothy is walking around on them all day, getting them scuffed, having no real idea of what they are worth, only that people want them. Yep, there are some cool possibilities here.
What could go wrong though is in an attempt to have a fresh look at the concept of this magical story the creators could go so far away from the original and over the top with the sci-fi genre that the appeal of an OZ with a sci-fi twist would be lost.
To the best of my knowledge and research there has never been a sci-fi version of The Wizard of Oz. And as long as the commercials for it don’t look like Cleopatra 2525 meets Oz I will be open to seeing it.
