Sam Raimi is officially signed to direct the prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Walt Disney previously offered to Raimi and also considering directors like Sam Mendes, Adam Shankman, Timur Bekmembatov and Guillermo Del Toro too. According to Deadline, Raimi is set to do the job after finalizing details at Walt Disney.
Since he lost the job of Spider-Man 4 at Sony, it has been wildly rumoured that Raimi's next directorial job would be a live-adaptation of The Shadow (now he's producing it), which was announced recently. There isn't much to talk about on The Shadow now but it would be interesting things to see on how Raimi will tackle the beloved tale. At the least, the director will be focusing on making this prequel, before turning attention to a planned adaptation film on World of Warcraft will be made under Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures.
The prequel, Oz, The Great and Powerful will have synopsis as follows:
Based on one of the many Frank Baum books, and a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, but told from the wizard’s point of view when he first enters Oz, 50 years before Dorothy. The Wizard is a young womanizing con artist who arrives in the land of Oz accidentally, and is mistaken to be a Wizard, playing along hoping to reap the riches of Oz, only to be thrown into a civil war of a royal family of three young women who later become the witches – 2 evil and 1 good.The script is written by Mitchell Kapner (The Whole Nine Yards, Romeo Must Die). It looks like Walt Disney has a slight advantage over few Oz-related projects been currently developed at Hollywood. only last month, Warner Bros had hired Drew Barrymore to direct Sudden Dorothy, a sequel to the original 1939 film involving Dorothy’s great, great granddaughter. The studio also has another Oz sequel in development written by Josh Olsen (A History of Violence) that seems to be taking a similar approach to the material. One big question, is Robert Downey Jr in for the Oz prequel?
SOURCES: Screen Rant, Deadline