My kids are really excited for Friday’s release of the movie Oz The Great and Powerful. Indeed, my daughter was Dorothy last Halloween. 
I have to admit I am actually looking forward to seeing this movie (unlike most of their movies) because I grew up watching the Wizard of Oz every year when it was on TV. I hadn’t realized that the new Oz movie is not being made by the company that owns the rights to the Wizard of Oz, but instead by Disney. This raises issues of intellectual property law. We haven’t covered these laws in class yet, but the purpose of intellectual property laws is to provide protection for those that create or invent. The laws at issue here are copyright laws, which give the owner the exclusive right to use the copyrighted material, which are the tangible expression of their ideas. Dorothy’s sparkling ruby slippers? Those belong to Warner Brothers, so Disney can’t use them. 
The yellow brick road? Disney will have one, but it won’t be all twisted and twirling like the road in the original. This New York Times article highlights the detailed and arduous process that the Disney movie-makers and their lawyers had to go through to make sure every aspect of their movie was different enough to avoid violating Warner Brothers’ copyrights. It is a really interesting real-life application of our intellectual property laws. I will report back after I see the movie this weekend, and see if I think any of the movie was in violation.
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4 Comments
Andie Firestone posted on March 4, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Even though we haven’t learned about copyright laws yet, I think it always seems to be a topic of debate in the news. It’s interesting to read about a real life example and see how careful Disney has to be so they don’t run into any of these problems. I also think it is interesting that Disney decided to make a prequel of such a classic movie. It seems like their time could be better spent if they came up with a brand new movie idea, and then they would have to worry less about copyright laws. However, it should be exciting to see the parallels and differences Disney had to make in order to make it ‘their own’.
Rachel Spooner posted on March 11, 2013 at 8:33 am
We saw the movie yesterday. It was great. My kids were captivated. It was strangely related, but completely different from the original movie. The lawyers did a good job walking the fine line of copyright law.
Rachael Shanker posted on March 20, 2013 at 4:03 pm
As someone who is an avid collector of Wizard of Oz memorabilia since I was very young, I know the movie and everything Oz inside and out (and of course i’ve seen the new film). I’ve seen the wizard of oz in all of it’s forms including the Broadway musical Wicked (numerous times).
When I learned they were coming out with a “pre-quel”, I questioned Disney’s potential use of some of the most valuable and iconic film elements in Hollywood that were owned by Warner Bros. I remembered in Wicked that you never saw the ruby red slippers outright or the actors walk down an exact replica of the yellow brick road. The witch of the west was green, but I never compared color swatches.
It seems to me to be a two way street. The original book is public domain and Disney had every right to re-imagine the story and use the characters and geography of Emerald City. Warner Bros trademarked the ruby slippers amongst other parts from the 1939 film. I think Disney lawyers did a good job of not letting Warner Bros cross the trademark line and exercise complete copyright over every detail.
There were many connections to the original movie and their stories (i particularly enjoyed the black and white in the beginning), but i still wondered where some of the most iconic characters and memorabilia was.
Nicole Pellegrino posted on March 21, 2013 at 9:33 am
If they had to significantly change the way the movie was presented to avoid a lawsuit didn’t it take away form the original concept of the move? And even if it is different it is still a spin off of the original wizard of oz, so wouldn’t that cause problems for disney? Or is it only a problem if they use the exact duplicate of what was presented in the original movie? I love the wizard of oz, so when I saw the coming attractions to the new Oz movie I was a little skeptical but if you liked it i think i’ll go check it out!