3 Things I Learned About OZ: The Great and Powerful

For the OZ obsessed, I just watched this long (25.28 sec) video of two fabulous film nerds, Peter from Schiarra from /Film and Steve Weintraub from Collider.com discussing their visit to the set of Disney's OZ: The Great and Powerful two years ago! They were allowed to visit with the caveat that they hold their posting until now.  Standard Hollywood stuff. Anyway it's a fascinating talk about this prequel to the story we all know and love. First and foremost, who OZ was before he was the man behind the curtain, (Oscar Diggs played by James Franco).

3 things I learned about OZ, the Great and Powerful

#1 James Franco was not the first choice to play OZ. First was Robert Downey Jr (who these two would have preferred, frankly), next was Johnny Depp. Then came Franco. And they're not sure if he will 'bring it'.
#2  There will be no ruby slippers. They were silver in the book and since Warner Bros, not Disney owns the rights to the 'ruby slippers', they will be silver in the film.
#3   The identity of the wicked witch. I got so engrossed I didn't pay attention to the time code spoiler alert and heard the name of the actress playing the wicked witch without necessarily meaning to. 3 guesses: Is it Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis or Michelle Williams?


/Film and Collider.com have kindly provided a time code description of what you'll be seeing including a SPOILER ALERT at 17:20 if you don't want to know which actress turns out to be the WICKED WITCH. I'm posting it here too just in case you don't have an entire half hour to spend.

Timecode:
0:00 Introduction, about the film
2:00 Our appreciation of the original 1939 Film
3:00 Brief Impressions from the set
6:30 Not sure about James Franco as Oz
8:40 Why OZ might look like Avatar or Alice in Wonderland
9:50 The evolution of the yellow brick road
10:45 Paying homage to the 1939 film
11:15 The black and white opening of the film and trip to Oz
12:25 The legal difficulties having to avoid infringing on the rights on the 1939 film adaptation
14:30 Filming on practical sets with CG extension and using practical make-up effects
17:20 SPOILER WARNING: This is where the discussion of the actresses that plays The Wicked Witch begins [Spoilers end after this segment]
19:15 Using live performances and practical puppet stand-ins for the CG characters
23:00 Final thoughts

I'm sure I'll be posting more about OZ in the coming weeks; I've been seeing some fantastic sets and costumes and I'm really pleased that director Sam Raimi's intentions are to honor the original film, which many of us grew up with and have ingrained in our psyches, as well as returning to L Frank Baum's books (there were 15 in all) to tell his prequel which will hopefully stand alone beautifully while also expanding our appreciation of our beloved Wizard of Oz.