Todd McFarlane spills the beans on 'Twisted Land of Oz'

[Dom Duncombe]

As many of you may know, a movie based on Spawn creator Todd McFarlane's line of toys entitled 'The Twisted Land of Oz' has been in development hell for many years, at one point even having Michael Bay attached to direct before he took on Transformers, and more recently Josh Olsen, author of A History of Violence and I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script, was drafted to pen the screenplay. Well, after a long silent spell, McFarlane has seen fit to spill the beans regarding some of the story and the future of the project.

In an interview with MTV, McFarlane lays out his vision for the movie by saying that "Number one: you have to turn off the switch to the [1939] MGM movie. If you don't turn off that switch, almost everything I'm about to say will not make sense to you... There's a lot of wink wink, nudge nudge stuff, so ['Twisted Land' isn't] completely devoid of what we've come to know"

In McFarlane's vision Dorothy begins her journey in the Antarctic, a monochrome landscape to match the original's black-and-white opening scenes. He claims that most of the original characters will return, though some will be significantly altered; "There's still a thing called Toto, except its the biggest thing in the movie and not the smallest thing. [The beast called Toto] basically ate the first dog, and it's this big thing that [the inhabitants of Oz] ride. They've given this generic word... so instead of horses, [people] ride Totos."

McFarlane goes on to say that Olsen's treatment of the material wasn't to his, or the studio's liking; ""My understanding is that [the studio] thought we went a little too conservative, so somebody else is taking a crack at [the script] now." But he also accepts that his original vision may be too controversial to ever see the light of day, and that compromises are inevitable.

Recently we have been seeing a lot of classic children's stories being updated with a much darker tone (think Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland) so this is a perfect time for the studios to crank this out, and considering how creepy the source material already is (the wheelers in 'Return to Oz' are some of the scariest things in any film ever) I can see this version verging on the horrific. Exciting stuff.

Source: MTV