Danny Elfman

“The Lone Ranger” isn’t the only film teasing an upcoming Super Bowl ad this week: Disney also released a munchkin-sized teaser of its latest spot for Sam Raimi’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” as well as several new character portraits. The movie recounts the tale of just how Oz (James Franco) journeyed from dusty Kansas to the glorious Technicolor world over the rainbow. In the screenplay, credited to Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire, a strong storm blows Franco’s magician/con man into the distant land, where he encounters talking china dolls, flying monkeys and several witches, including Mila Kunis’ Theodora, Rachel Weisz’s Evanora and Michelle Williams’ sunny Glinda. It’s the first new film from Raimi since his under-appreciated 2009 horror outing “Drag Me to Hell,” and it sees the director returning to the massive blockbuster territory he explored with a trilogy […]

“The Wizard of Oz” features some of the most beloved songs in movie musical history: “Over the Rainbow,” “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” “Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead.” But with Disney’s March 8 release, “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” director Sam Raimi and composer Danny Elfman were quite conscious of putting a wholly unique stamp on a project inspired by author L. Frank Baum’s original books, not the Oscar-winning 1939 movie. In one instance, though, that directive proved especially tricky — when writing a song for a sequence in which a group of happy Munchkins welcome James Franco’s Oz to the Emerald City, Elfman found himself in something of a predicament. “These Munchkins are little people in a joyous town of fantasy singing an up-tempo welcoming song. There really aren’t that many ways to apply that,” Elfman said during […]