In the current issue of Total Film magazine, we chat to horror maestro Sam Raimi about his Wizard Of Oz prequel, Oz The Great And Powerful.

The director who cut his blockbuster teeth on the pre-reboot Spider-Man trilogy won’t be reinventing the Yellow Brick Road classic; he’ll be jumping to an earlier point in the timeline of the L. Frank Baum books to explore the characters’ origins.

You can read the full feature in the current issue of Total Film magazine (available on your iPad for just £1.99), but here’s a snippet of what Raimi had to say about his story in comparison to the original film:

““I think The Wizard Of Oz is such a great film and I would never attempt to [remake that],” he explained. “You could call [Oz] a prequel, that would be accurate - but I didn’t have to re-invent any of that fantastic history.”

“Mitchell [Kapner, screenwriter] took about 40 per cent of the events that were sprinkled here and there about Oz from Baum’s books and really created the other 60 per cent himself out of his imagination, because there just wasn’t enough there,” Raimi added.

“I gave him notes, I brought aboard a second writer to help fill out some other areas of the story, my brother did a little work on the script, and all the actors contributed. It really was a very big collaboration.”

Oz The Great And Powerful opens on 8 March 2013.

For much more from Sam Raimi and his cast, pick up Total Film magazine issue 203 - which is out now!

Read a full preview of Total Film magazine - Issue 203.

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