Disney Gambles on Box-Office Wizardry of ‘Oz’

On Friday, when this wizard and his hot air balloon land in theaters, the Walt Disney Company hopes ticket buyers won’t think the same thing.

No movie studio would have the nerve to remake “The Wizard of Oz,” the beloved 1939 musical ranked by the Library of Congress as the most-watched film in history. But “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a Disney-produced prequel, is nearly as intrepid. The company is betting that a new twist on a story moviegoers already love will result in a hit on par with “Alice in Wonderland,” which took in more than $1 billion in 2010.

It’s a breathtaking gamble. “Oz,” at turns goofy and dark (and not a musical), cost about $325 million to make and market, according to people who worked on the movie who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with Disney. Mr. Franco has never anchored a mainstream movie before. Because of copyright constraints Disney was not able to reproduce certain iconic imagery from the “The Wizard of Oz,” which is owned by Warner Brothers.

And audiences have already rallied around a “Wizard of Oz” prequel: “Wicked” has been a Broadway hit for nearly 10 years.

Disney’s marketers have not been cowed by the huge shadow cast by the original “Oz” — indeed, their ads for the new film invite comparisons to the classic. But the popularity of the original may ultimately represent the studio’s biggest challenge. Is there room for a new cinematic vision of Oz, as Disney believes? Or will movie audiences (and critics) be reluctant to embrace an Oz that does not look a certain way, have a certain tone and feature a certain set of slippers?

Hollywood is confronting issues like these with greater regularity. Studios, ever-desperate for source material that is both familiar and comfortable to consumers, have leaned more heavily toward sequels and prequels.

But nostalgic properties are tricky. There are liberties you can take and ones you cannot, producers say, and the lines are blurry.

Sean Bailey, Disney’s president of movie production, said in an interview that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the box-office prospects for “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which was loosely based on the novels of L. Frank Baum.

“Going in, we certainly talked a lot about these iconic books, the iconic movie and the iconic musical,” Mr. Bailey said. “We felt there was room for a new story. We felt this great land was worthy of exploration and that it could be creatively exciting.”

Mr. Bailey and Alan F. Horn, Disney’s new studio chairman, are under pressure to deliver a hit. “John Carter,” which opened a year ago, forced the company to take a $200 million write-down, one of the largest in movie history. Since “John Carter,” releases on the Disney label have included “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” which took in a ho-hum $51.9 million, and “Frankenweenie,” a critical success but a box office failure, which sold just $35.3 million in tickets in North America.

Disney is betting that going big is the key to a turnaround — hiring marquee directors and stars with serious acting credentials for pictures with giant budgets. After “Oz” comes “The Lone Ranger,” a comedic Western starring Johnny Depp as Tonto. In July 2014 Disney plans to release “Maleficent,” starring Angelina Jolie as the evil sorceress from “Sleeping Beauty.”

Tackling such well-known material risks stepping on memories, however. Oz itself has proved difficult in that regard over the years. Audiences recoiled from “The Wiz,” a 1978 adaptation of the stage musical. The response to “Return to Oz,” a 1985 Disney effort that found Dorothy in an asylum, was equally dismal.

For “Oz the Great and Powerful,” directed by Sam Raimi, Batman offers one positive point of comparison; that character, which coincidentally first appeared in a 1939 comic book, has been successfully reincarnated at the multiplex for several generations, noted Bob Gazzale, president of the American Film Institute.

The 2005 remake “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a more cautionary example. What seemed like a good idea on paper — Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, with lots of digital imagery — was ultimately a disappointment, with a fey Mr. Depp and his computer-generated Oompa Loompas striking moviegoers as a tad creepy.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/media/disney-gambles-on-box-office-wizardry-of-oz.html?partner=rss&emc=rss