Disney’s The Great and Powerful Oz, a prequel to the Wizard of Oz comes out today. The iconic film we’re all familiar with is based on a Frank L. Baum book that’s in the public domain, however the movie is based on Baum’s characters are mainly the property of Warner Bros.
So I thought this was interesting when it came to copyright:
Striving for a visage different from the one Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch) made famous, Howard Berger, an Oscar-winning makeup artist, “was finally able to come up with a shade of green which satisfied Disney’s legal team,” SlashFilm.com reported after a visit to the set. According to Disney’s production notes Mr. Berger named his custom color Theostein — a conflation of the witch’s name before she turns wicked, and Frankenstein.
About 40 dwarfs were cast in “Oz the Great and Powerful” as Munchkins… They still have weird hair, but Disney lawyers nixed at least one style as too similar to one from the original movie. It was tweaked in postproduction using computers.