For quite a while now, Sam Raimi’s name has been floating around in connection with Disney’s Oz The Great And Powerful, which also has Robert Downey Jr. attached and will follow the story of how the Wizard Of Oz got to the fantasy realm and was mistaken for a great sorceror.
According to Deadline, Disney has now received a commitment from Raimi that he’ll direct the film, and they’ve hired high profile scribe David Lindsay Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Robots) to rewrite the screenplay and work with Raimi on getting it ready to shoot next year. Interestingly, Abaire was one of the people Raimi brought in to work on his aborted fourth Spider-man movie, so he must have liked what he did there.
And while he’s getting Oz ready, THR reports that he’ll also be producing The Au Pair through his Ghost House Productions company. The movie will be an adaptation of R.L. Stine’s The Sitter, with Dana Stevens on scripting duties. Stine’s book is about a young woman who escapes an abusive relationship to become a nanny for a well-off family in the Hampton Mountains. The tale takes a turn for the worse when she discovers a secret that puts herself, and the kids she’s caring for, in danger.