Remakes have always been the go-to Hollywood Big Idea for decades.
Some, Dune and Ocean's Eleven among them, go one better than the original. Others, like this bizarre Wizard of Oz pitch, are mercifully left in the backlot of a nameless executive's mind.
"One of the worst ideas I've ever heard, during [Harry Potter], wanted to cast me, Emma [Watson] and Rupert [Grint] in a remake of Wizard of Oz where Emma was Dorothy. I just remember that I was going to be the lion, but he also knows karate. I was a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion," Daniel Radcliffe said during an appearance on Hot Ones.
He added, "I was 14 or 15 and like, 'I don't know a lot about the world, but this is a bad idea. This should not be made.'"
Radcliffe's judgment, it seems, was on point even from an early age. While, yes, the 1939 classic Wizard of Oz was itself a remake of a lesser-known 1925 silent film, it instantly achieved all-timer status, being held aloft as one of the 20th Century's greatest movies.
We're not quite sure how a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion would have improved things, let alone the whole Harry Potter x Wizard of Oz analog making it feel like a Saturday Night Live sketch gone wrong.
Of course, viewers returned to Oz as part of two Wicked movies, adaptations of the 2000s stage musical, which itself was loosely based on Gregory Maguire's novel.
There, we were treated to a musical re-imagining of events leading up to the Wizard of Oz – including the blossoming friendship between Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo).
The first Wicked, released in 2024, received acclaim from both audiences and awards boards, though its 2025 sequel Wicked: For Good hit a flat note, proving a relative disappointment at the box office.
Daniel Radcliffe is currently starring in NBC sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins alongside Tracy Morgan.
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