Why didn't they make more Oz films?

[Zsinj]

One question I've always had is, since there was multiple books in the Oz series by L. Frank Baum, why was only one Oz film made? Why couldn't there have been sequels based on the other books? And yes, I know about the dark-toned Return to Oz made in the 80s, and I've always liked it.
So what wass the reason? Was it due to lack of technology to make the various races and monsters and other fantastical elements? Was it a disagreement that happened between Baum's estate and MGM? Or was it just a lack of desire to make additional films?

[greymouse]

The first official trailor for Oz The Great and Powerful was just released yesterday. It looks promising, in my humble opinion.

[Rob B]

There was also an awful sequel in the 1980s by Disney, Return to Oz and i believe animated movie or two.

[Gkarlives]

I think the times were just different. Technology, ideology, and etc, I am thinking at the time The Wizard of Oz was a grand experiment and probably scared the hell out of the producers and studios being outside their norms.

[JangoLee]

There was also an awful sequel in the 1980s by Disney, Return to Oz and i believe animated movie or two.

Wasn't that the story with Tick-Tock, the clock-work man, and some jokers with wheels for hands and feet? And some weird flying contraption, I think.

If that is the movie I am thinking of, it was pretty sorry.

[greymouse]

Wasn't that the story with Tick-Tock, the clock-work man, and some jokers with wheels for hands and feet? And some weird flying contraption, I think.

There were the sinister Wheelers, with wheels for hands and feet, and a flying, reanimated Moose Head transport that began philosophizing about its condition the moment the reanimating potion took effect.

I think what can make that sort of preposterous stuff truly frightening is the dream or nightmare-like quality of the entire film context. On some level, the mind knows that it can actually encounter such things. Terror can come from not knowing you're dreaming, or being able to wake up.

(A footnote: Baum lived in Chicago for a time. In northwest Indiana--a region Chicago people sometimes escaped to during the heat of summer in those days--there's a little town named Wheeler, and another little town named Toto.)

[JangoLee]

There were the sinister Wheelers, with wheels for hands and feet, and a flying, reanimated Moose Head transport that began philosophizing about its condition the moment the reanimating potion took effect.

I think what can make that sort of preposterous stuff truly frightening is the dream or nightmare-like quality of the entire film context. On some level, the mind knows that it can actually encounter such things. Terror can come from not knowing you're dreaming, or being able to wake up.

(A footnote: Baum lived in Chicago for a time. In northwest Indiana--a region Chicago people sometimes escaped to during the heat of summer in those days--there's a little town named Wheeler, and another little town named Toto.)

I was thinking about it,and I remember reading the book that featured The Wheelers and the Flying Moose-Head, and I have to say that it was pretty good. I think that the Wheelers WERE fairly creepy in the movie, a reincarnation of the flying monkeys in the way they behaved and moved.

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Gump. That was the moose-like animal they turned into a flying machine by tying two sofas together with clothes line, mounting the gump's head in front, and using palm leaves for wings. They put it together in the second(?) Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz.

I didn't see Return to Oz, perhaps mercifully, if it is bad as everyone says, but I always liked the Gump in the books.

And I remember watching this one The Land of Oz on television when I was a child. I don't know how it would hold up now, but I thought it was wonderful then. It was part of a series that Shirley Temple (grown up) hosted and sometimes played roles in. I think I liked all of the episodes.

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[Banger]

I disagree with those panning Return to Oz.

I saw Return to Oz in the theater as a kid and found it terrifying. It has a much darker tone than the 1939 film. For example, at the start of the film (i.e., months after she has returned from her first visit to Oz), Dorothy's aunt and uncle send her to an insane asylum for shock treatment. The bleak, desolate Oz Dorothy finds on her return is especially unsettling when compared to the brightly-colored and joyous village of the Munchkins of the 1939 film. Fairuza Balk is downright creepy as Dorothy, and Jean Marsh is frightening as the evil, head-swapping witch Mombi.

Having watched the film for the first time in decades just a year or so ago, I found it still holds up as an entertaining 1980s dark fantasy, along the lines of The Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes.