We all know about Spawn creator Todd McFarlane‘s hopes to bring a dark and twisted new vision of the classic L. Frank Baum story, The Wizard of Oz, to the big screen, but so far, as he talked to MTV recently about, no one has been able to construct a script that has gained the approval of McFarlane’s vision. The latest to attempt the project was by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson, but even his finished product was what McFarlane referred to as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — meaning far too light for his dark vision. The purpose in all of this is to aim at young people, mainly in their 20s, and McFarlane’s pitch to executives clearly stated “Number one: you have to turn off the switch to the [1939] MGM movie. If you don’t turn off that switch, almost everything I’m about to say will not make sense to you.”

This isn’t to say that he wants nothing to do with the classic film; he ensures people that there will be plenty of recognizable elements to his movie, even though it will be so incredibly different and unique. As the source story best put it, McFarlane is not out to turn the story into a movie — that’s been done before — but to be inspired by it. Keep in mind, the 1939 Judy Garland film was nowhere near the first telling of the story. The near 110-year-old book was printed in 1900, and much like The Maltese Falcon, there were multiple movies made before the classic was born. There were films made in 1910, 1914, 1925, and 1932, including another in 1921 that was never completed.

Click over for a brief story description from McFarlane himself AND to actually watch the near 100-year-old first silent film and others, just in case you’ve never had the joy.