When Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion sang "we're off to see the wizard," did you have James Franco in mind? Too bad, since Franco plays the wizard before he became the wizard in Sam Raimi's "Oz The Great and Powerful."
Franco stars as Oscar Diggs, a Kansas magician-slash-hustler who gets transported to the Land of Oz during a tornado. There he meets three witches -- Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Glinda (Michelle Williams) -- and tries to fulfill his destiny of becoming a great man. ("I don't want to be a good man," Franco says in the clip, "I want to be a great one.") Also, one of the witches is probably evil. (Spoiler: It's probably not Glinda.)
Directed by Raimi, the Disney release looks an awful lot like Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." That's no mistake, either: The film was produced by Joe Roth, who also produced "Alice," and arrives in theaters on March 8, 2013 -- just over three years to the day that "Alice in Wonderland" was released. Burton's film grossed over $1 billion worldwide, so Disney is probably hoping the surface similarities extend to revenue as well.
Watch the sparkling new trailer in HD above.
[via Apple]