It’s only a few days since it was reported that Sam Raimi was being offered the prestigious directing gig on Disney’s future tentpole “Oz The Great and Powerful,” a prequel to the classic “The Wizard of Oz,” focusing on how the titular wizard came to rule over the magical land. EW suggested yesterday that negotiations had begun officially, and now confirmation has come from Nikki Finke at Deadline that Raimi has taken the job.
Raimi beat out the rumored likes of Sam Mendes, Adam Shankman and Timur Bekmambetov for the project, as well as Baz Luhrmann, who Heat Vision reported yesterday had flirted with the project for “like a second,” a phrase apparently written by someone on The Hollywood Reporter’s Bring Your Daughter To Work program.
Finke also seems to confirm that Robert Downey Jr. will take the central role, and that the film will be, unsurprisingly, in 3D. Raimi’s a strong choice for a tentpole like this, but we do wish that he’d chased “The Hobbit” instead; as we revealed a few days ago, the script was, as of a few months ago, kind of a mess. Having said that, we’re sure Raimi will take a stab at it, or bring a writer with him, so hopefully it can be solved before filming begins.
There’s no word on an official start date, which means one of two things; either it’ll kick off next spring/summer for a 2012 release, after Downey Jr’s wrapped on “The Avengers,” or it’ll shoot this summer before the actor’s committed to begin on “Sherlock Holmes 2.” The latter option seems like bad news all round; not only would mean very little prep time for Raimi and less chance to get the script right, but it would seem to signify problems for Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity,” which Downey Jr. was recently said would also shoot this summer. We think the first option is more likely, but we’re sure more news will come in soon as to when we’ll be returning to Oz.