Off to see 'The Wizard of Oz' in 3-D and on IMAX

LOS ANGELES — There's no place like a restored home.

Nearly 75 years after its dazzling Technicolor debut, The Wizard of Oz will be converted to 3-D and IMAX for a one-week theatrical run in September, Warner Bros. and IMAX officials will announce Tuesday.

The restoration marks the film industry's highest-profile conversion yet of a 2-D classic. Already, studios have remastered films including Titanic, Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But Oz "is as iconic as they come," says Greg Foster, chairman and president of Imax Entertainment. "It was one of the first movies that truly came out at you with an explosion of color."

Studio execs hope to come at audiences with an enhanced look at the yellow brick road: namely, digitally enhanced sound and images to bring Dorothy and company into 3-D and IMAX's colossal format. Warner Bros. quietly remastered the film for months before bringing the reel to IMAX for a test run.

"The sound was exceptional, the sharpness was exceptional," says Foster. "But it's the color that stands out. What they could do is truly amazing, maybe what people felt when they first saw it."



The restoration is part of the studio's promotion for Oz's 75th anniversary edition, which will arrive Oct. 1. The five-disc set will include Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3-D, DVD and UltraViolet versions of the film, a new documentary on the making of the movie as well as bonus features.

The theatrical stint will begin Sept. 20 and run for one week in IMAX's 400 theaters nationwide, including those in museums. The movie, which will not appear on standard screens, will get a limited international release, but details are not yet final.

Though it remains one of Hollywood's most revered and recognized films, "very few people have seen The Wizard of Oz in theaters," Foster says.

Indeed, after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer introduced the film starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr in 1939,Oz earned strong reviews and six Oscar nominations (winning for original score and original song), but enjoyed only mild commercial success. It did a respectable $3 million (or about $50 million today) at the box office, but cost $2.8 million (or $46 million today). Re-releases drove its total ticket sales to $16.7 million.

Foster says modern moviegoers now can catch what many audiences missed when Oz was the IMAX of its day.

"That must have been an amazing experience to see it then, to be truly taken away to another world," he says. "That's what we'd like to do."