A little while back came the news that “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris is set to write and direct a new take on L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” for Warner Bros. Pictures.
Appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon this week, Barris opened up about the project and explained that initially he wanted to do a new take on 1978’s “The Wiz,” Sidney Lumet’s musical fantasy adventure version of the property starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.
So he went to “The Wiz” distributor Universal Pictures to pitch his take and quickly realised it wasn’t going to happen for a very specific reason – the long-gestating and now finally happening film adaptation of the “Wizard of Oz” stage musical prequel “Wicked”:
“It’s a big deal. Me and Rashida Jones, who’s my sister, we wanted to do The Wiz. You know, her dad did the music for it, and we thought it would be great. We went to the studio who owns The Wiz, and I love the people, but they were kind of hedging, and then we realized they were never going to let us do it because they had Wicked coming out, and they had invested so much money in Wicked.”
That didn’t stop Barris though, who met with then Warner Bros. Pictures head Toby Emmerich about a reimagining of the original 1939 film adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” – which happened to be Emmerich’s favorite film. Barris wanted to update the storyline and its characters to better reflect how things have changed in the near century since:
“I gave him my pitch of, I think The Wizard of Oz, back in the day, it turned a mirror – it was like the Dust Bowl, Great Depression era – and it turned a mirror on society. That’s what it was about. It was talking about self-reliance and things like that. I think that this is the best time to turn a mirror on society because we need to see ourselves, and I want to do it with diverse characters. I really want to sort of, you know, the character lives in Inglewood, and someone comes up and she ends up in Underhood, which is right outside of Oz, and it takes place from there.”
Barris says he’s been writing the film alongside musicians who are putting the music together and as the film tells you what’s happening through song, he wants to carry that over with the remake: “I wanted to make people think, but also make them feel good, and also make people feel seen who hadn’t felt seen.”
The new “Wizard of Oz” hasn’t set a release date. Barris’ new comedy feature “You People,” starring Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy, is now in select cinemas ahead of a Netflix release this coming Friday.
