Todd McFarlane's weird visions are going to help the Warner Brothers revisit Oz.  Variety reports that Dorothy and her friends are going to be ripped from McFarlane's L. Frank Baum-based toy line.

McFarlane said, "My pitch was ‘How do we get people who went to ‘Lord of the Rings’ to embrace this?’  I want to create (an interpretation) that has a 2007 wow factor. You’ve still got Dorothy trapped in an odd place, but she’s much closer to the Ripley from ‘Alien’ than a helpless singing girl."  McFarlane may also have skipped the part in the books where Dorothy was a little girl, not a teenager as Judy Garland played her.

Josh Olsen will be writing the script, though he's dialing down the fetish factor.  He said, "I saw those toys, and Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do.  The appealing thing about the Baum books to me is how wildly imaginative they are.

There are crazy characters from amazing places. I want this to be ‘Harry Potter’ dark, not ‘Seven’ dark."

SciFi is currently working on a big-budget (for them) adaptation of the Oz books called "Tin Man."  his only goes to show once again: there are no new ideas in Hollywood these days.

In news of the other fannish MacFarlane, the producer said thoughts of a movie are dancing in his brain.

MacFarlane said, "I would like to do a Family Guy movie at some point.  I'd like it to be a musical.  It'd be great if we could do it within the next few years. The challenge is finding the time to do it while we're doing a TV series because you don't want the TV series to suffer."  This may be a subtle jab at fellow FOX series The Simpsons, which has suffered in quality over the past few years but delivered a fantastic big-screen appearance.

(Additional Source: Rotten Tomatoes)