Another classic to be mangled by the SciFi Channel

The Wizard of Oz is the latest classic piece of literature destined to be mangled by the SciFi Channel. Clearly not having learnt anything from the disaster that was Legend of Earthsea, an adaptation so bad the books’ author Ursula K Le Guin has written an article explaining why it’s so bad, they’re taking The Wizard of Oz to “the next level” where they hope to “make it relevant, modern and fresh to a new generation”.

The only thing that gives me a glimmer of hope is that Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle will be writing it: they created the excellent NBC series The Pretender. But:

Using adjectives such as psychedelic, twisted and bizarre to describe “Tin Man,” Sci Fi said the mini turns Dorothy into a young woman named DG, who finds herself plunged into a netherworld called the Outer Zone. Other celebrated characters are reimagined in “Tin Man”: the cowardly lion as a wolverine-like creature without backbone, the wicked witch as a sorceress called Azkadellia and the wizard as a larger-than-life figure called the Mystic Man.

Doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it, book-lovers?

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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