Disney has managed to get director Sam Raimi to commit to making Oz: The Great and Powerful as his next film.  The studio has hired David Lindsay-Abaire to rewrite the script for the new Oz film that it hopes to get into production in 2011.  Raimi is courting Robert Downey, Jr. to star in Oz: The Great and Powerful, but the star has not yet committed to the project. 

Disney is planning to make Oz: The Great and Powerful as a 3-D tentpole “event” film that it hopes will enjoy the same sort of success as the studio’s Alice in Wonderland movie, which has earned over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.

According to Deadline, Raimi chose to make Oz his next film instead of an adaptation of the World of Warcraft online game for Legendary Pictures.  Since leaving Sony’s Spider-Man franchise Raimi has been considering a number of projects including a new film based on the 1930s pulp hero The Shadow (see “The Shadow Next for Raimi?”).

Even though L. Frank Baum's Oz novels are in the public domain, Disney shouldn't have much theatrical competition, since Guillermo del Toro turned down Warners' Oz project in favor of a film based on H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.

Marvel is in the midst of a stylish series of graphic novel adaptations of the public domain Oz novels by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young.