Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) on Netflix
PG20132h 10mAdventureFamilyFantasy
Oscar Diggs, a circus magician and con artist in Kansas, escapes a jealous strongman by balloon. A tornado sets him down in Oz, where the people take him for a prophesied wizard.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.3/10222,291 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes57%
Trailer
Plot summary
An old prophecy promises the Land of Oz a wizard who will defeat the Wicked Witch and rule as king. What arrives is Oscar Diggs, a stage magician and con artist from a Kansas circus, carried there by a tornado after a jealous strongman chased him into a hot air balloon. The witch Theodora greets him as that promised wizard, and Oscar, who has no magic, agrees to help her, tempted by wealth and fame. She leads him toward the Emerald City, with Finley, a winged monkey who pledges him a life debt, and a living china doll whose home was destroyed. In the Emerald City, Theodora's sister Evanora tells him the Wicked Witch can be found in the Dark Forest.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Warner Bros. owned the rights to iconic elements of the 1939 film, so Disney could not use the ruby slippers, Margaret Hamilton's signature chin mole for the Wicked Witch, or the yellow brick road's swirl design, and used a shade of witch green its legal department considered sufficiently different, dubbed "Theostein".
- Composer Danny Elfman was chosen in June 2011 despite having fallen out with Raimi over Spider-Man 2 and declared that the two could never work together again. He found the score quick to produce, writing a majority of the music in six weeks.
- Disney and Warner Bros. raced each other to the trademark office: Disney filed on Oz the Great and Powerful in October 2012, and when Warner filed The Great and Powerful Oz a week later, the US Patent and Trademark Office suspended Warner's application.
- Robert Downey Jr. was announced in 2010 as a candidate for the title role of the Wizard but declined in January 2011, and the part was then offered to Johnny Depp, who liked it but was already committed to The Lone Ranger. Sam Raimi was hired to direct from a shortlist that included Sam Mendes and Adam Shankman.
- The schedule was chaos: Rachel Weisz left halfway through the shoot to film her entire role in The Bourne Legacy and Franco's father died during production, while Mila Kunis's makeup and prosthetics took four hours to apply and another hour to remove, leaving her nearly two months to recover her skin.
- Several media outlets expected the film to duplicate the box office of 2010's Alice in Wonderland, but it took less than half of Alice's worldwide gross. It still remained the highest-grossing Oz-related film until December 2024, when Universal's Wicked out-grossed it.
