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She's played dress-up with E.T., kicked butt with Charlie's Angels -- and now Drew Barrymore is off to see The Wizard! Barrymore, 35, is set to direct the upcoming film Surrender Dorothy, a "sequel" to The Wizard of Oz. The movie will re-imagine the classic story as a showdown between Dorothy's great-great-granddaughter and the Wicked Witch of the West, who's now trying to conquer Oz and Earth. Once upon a time, Barrymore was actually set to star as Dorothy -- but now that she's a hotshot director-producer, she's getting behind the camera and taking charge! The film will be her second as director, after last year's rollerderby drama Whip It.
Surrender Dorothy is actually one of three major Oz movies in the works, including a big-screen adaptation of the musical Wicked and a prequel starring Robert Downey Jr as The Wizard. We haven't seen the Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow on the big screen since 1985's Return to Oz -- so why this sudden interest in ruby slippers? Part of it is that the copyright has run out on the Oz books, making them free for movie studios to adapt. But it's also part of a larger modern-fairy-tale trend, triggered by the success of Tim Burton's big-budget 3D Alice in Wonderland. Other bedtime stories set to be live-action movies include Sleeping Beauty (re-told from the witch's POV and rumored to star Angelina Jolie) and Cinderella (re-imagined by the writer of The Devil Wears Prada). Of course, you could argue that Drew Barrymore kicked off this whole trend in the first place, playing a feminist version of Cinderella in 1998's Ever After. Nice to see things come full circle, isn't it?
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Would you want to see a sequel to The Wizard of Oz? Chime in below!
