10 Weirdest Films To Come From Celebrated Directors
6. Sam Raimi - Oz The Great And Powerful
Sam Raimi is the gung-ho filmmaker responsible for the Evil Dead trilogy. However, his approach to the Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s led to a career turn as he began making more family friendly movies. That said, it seems that Raimi actively rejects this by continuously putting his name to horror films such as Drag Me To Hell, The Grudge, The Possession and Don’t Breathe.
Strangely, though, Raimi’s development from splatter horror to superhero franchise is somewhat coherent because in 1990 Raimi made Darkman, a dark horror superhero movie. The most unexpected film in Raimi’s repertoire is Disney’s Oz The Great And Powerful: a fantasy adventure prequel to The Wizard Of Oz that came about due to the popularity of the Broadway musical Wicked. Even though it was completely outside of his experience, Raimi was hand-picked from a list of interested directors that included Sam Mendes and Adam Shankman.
After its release, however, Raimi worked as a producer on the thriller Murder Of A Cat and Poltergeist, presumably in an attempt to return to his comfort zone of horror cinema after working with Disney. There are rumors of Oz The Great And Powerful getting a sequel, but there is no confirmation about Raimi working on it.