Confirmed! Sam Raimi To Direct Disney’s OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Well, I guess no WORLD OF WARCRAFT movie again, folks. Because as you know,Vulture reported that Disney was offering the directing job of OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL and this morning Deadline confirmed that deals are locked in and Raimi got the job…

Scripted by Mitchell Kapner (The Whole Nine Yards), this is basically a WIZARD OF OZ 3D prequel. Knepper’s story is based on several other L. Frank Baum “Oz” books as well as his original ideas and the twist in this version is that the wizard is “a charlatan who’s part of a traveling circus but goes on a similar odyssey as Dorothy when he mysteriously lands in Oz.”
The project is produced by Joe Roth and Robert Downey Jr. might play the wizard before he became the wizard of oz circa the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland.
RDJ’s character is “a circus wrangler transported by tornado to the mysterious world of Oz where he gets mistaken for a know-it-all”
Disney wants this to this the same global billion dollar success that Tim Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND enjoyed.