Horror Film Set in World of Frank Baum's WIZARD OF OZ In Development

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a horror film set in the universe of THE WIZARD OF OZ is currently in the works at New Line Cinema, based on a pitch by screenwriter Mike Van Waes. The script, said to be in early development, will be based on the world that author L. Frank Baum created in his iconic 1900 novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." The novel was adapted to the big screen in 1939's THE WIZARD OF OZ, which starred Judy Garland, Frank Morgan Ray Bolger, Burt Lahr and Margaret Hamilton. The film aired on TV every year from 1959 - 1991. Thirteen sequels to the original novel were later written and in 1902, the first installment was adapted to the Broadway stage.

Since then, the classic tale has undergone many incarnations on the big screen including THE WIZ, featuring an all African-American cast including Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell, Richard Pryor and Lena Horne, and more recently, Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful, starring Mila Kunis, James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff and Joey King. This season NBC premiered the new television series Emerald City, which is based on all 14 books.

WICKED, the long-running Broadway musical, is based on Gregory Maguire's bestselling 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and serves as a prologue to L Frank Baum's 1900 classic. It explains what happened before Dorothy arrived in the Land of Oz. In 2012, producer Marc Platt announced that a film version of the musical would "soon" be entering development stages.