Jon M. Chu who is set to bring one of the biggest Broadway productions to the big screen while expanding L. Frank Baum’s universe reflects on the societal shifts caused by the adaptations of Oz.
The Wicked director admitted that the Yellow Brick Road — referring to one of the hit melodies from Oz — is the road they have been traveling ever since Baum released The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900.
Its 1939 adaptation The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland, became a masterpiece and an iconography for follow-up movies. ‘The Wizard of Oz was always sort of prophetic in a way. It was written at a time of America in transition,’ Chu told NBC News. According to him. in that era, the Great Depression had just run its course and people were about to go to war.
Meanwhile, there were questions about what the American dream would look like ‘when the road ends and what are the possibilities of the next thing,’ he said explaining the context of Wizard of Oz’s release bringing a transition.
