New Line Cinema Picks Up Pitch for Horror Film Set in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ Lore

This further shows that there is no idea too strange for Hollywood.

The Hollywood Reporter broke that New Line Cinema has landed on a pitch from writer Mike Van Waes for an original high-concept horror film set “somewhere over the rainbow” in the Land of Oz, utilizing elements from L. Frank Baum’s classic 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The film is now in early development.

This feature will be one of Van Weis’ first screenwriting credits. He has also sold various scripts and ideas over the past year. His Hammerspace is now in the hands of Warner Bros. and his book proposal Peeves was picked up by Blue Sky Animation Studios at Fox.

This is certainly not the first, or the last, time Baum’s famous Land of Oz has been appropriated to new styles and genres. Along with the iconic M.G.M. Judy Garland film, there have been other films that have expanded on the story, such as Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful and Return to Oz, musicals that told the classic story from new perspectives and settings, such as The Wiz and Wicked, and even one told with Muppets! Given the ties to such a beloved family oriented name and the bizarre horror approach to it, the new horror flick will most likely be a horror-comedy along the lines of 2015’s Krampus.

The new wicked horror feature, which won’t be for the cowardly, will be another addition to New Line Cinema’s impressive line-up of recent horror films, such as The Conjuring films, Annabelle, and the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s It.