Update: Soon to be 12 year old Joey King is making her classmates jealous. After recently joining “The Dark Knight Rises,” the child actress has also joined “Oz The Great And Powerful” in the role of China Girl reports Variety. In the film, her character is taken under the wing of Oz (Franco) after Evanora (Weisz) destroys her porcelain family.
Release dates and shooting schedules have become big news of late. With Relativity announcing yesterday they were moving their Tarsem-directed Snow White film to March 16, 2012 release with shooting to begin next month, it only stressed how more and more productions are given shorter deadlines not only to beat rival projects, but to get movies to fans sooner. “The Hunger Games” is another movie that will coming in under similar time constraints with casting still happening this week, despite a March 23, 2012 date on the horizon. But over at Disney, they’re taking their time with their big fairy tale movie.
It has been announced that Sam Raimi‘s “Oz: The Great And Powerful” will land on March 8, 2013. That’s right, just a little less than two years from now. Starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams, the prequel of sorts follows Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs (Franco), a showman and magician at a traveling circus who flees in a hot air balloon after being caught canoodling with a customer’s wife only to be swept away in a terrible storm to wake up in the magical land of Oz, which is run by two magical wicked witches (Kunis and Weisz). Williams will play Glinda the Good Witch.
Considering 2013 is still wide open, the choice of the weekend is very interesting. We bet Disney are hoping to duplicate the billion dollar success of the similarly styled “Alice In Wonderland” released last year in the same frame, but they will be opening up against Neill Blomkamp‘s secretive sci-fi film “Elysium” with Matt Damon, Sharlto Copley, Jodie Foster, Wagner Moura and William Fichtner that Sony has also set for the same date. However, with that big-budget film already announced to be going for an R-rating, the two films will be skewing to two very different audiences, but you can bet Sony would have preferred if Disney chose any other open weekend except the same one. It will be interesting to see if Sony counters by moving their film but 2013 is still a long way off and there is still lots of time for maneuvering. [via Deadline]
