From the book that's an American tradition...from the smash-hit Broadway show...the entertainment of the year!

The Motown remake of "The Wizard of Oz"!

The Wiz! The Stars! The Music! Wow!


Sidney Lumet's The Wiz is the film version of the popular Broadway musical that retells the events of L. Frank Baum's classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz through the eyes of a young African-American kindergarten teacher who's "never been below 125th Street." Leaving a large family dinner to chase her dog into a snowstorm, Dorothy (Diana Ross) is swept up by a cyclone and transplanted to the land of Oz -- which looks suspiciously like a skewed version of the run-down Manhattan of the late '70s. Landing on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, the puzzled Dorothy is greeted by munchkins who peel themselves from a graffiti mural and sing to her about the Wiz (Richard Pryor), a powerful wizard living in Emerald City who can help her get home. On her journey down the yellow brick road, she encounters a garbage-stuffed scarecrow (Michael Jackson) in a junkyard, a broken-down tin man (Nipsey Russell) caught in the decay of an old amusement park, and a cowardly lion (Ted Ross) posing as a stone statue outside a museum. The quartet tangles with a subway station that comes to life, a poppy den, and a gaggle of motorcycle henchman on their way to the Wiz -- who orders them to kill the Wicked Witch of the West (a sweatshop tyrant) before he will grant them their wishes. The Wiz has about double the large-scale production numbers of The Wizard of Oz (1939), with songs written and composed by Charlie Smalls.


The Wiz is a 1978 musical adventure film produced by Motown Productions and Universal Pictures, and released by Universal on October 24, 1978. An urbanized retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz featuring an entirely African-American cast, The Wiz was adapted from the 1975 Broadway musical of the same name. The film follows the adventures of Dorothy, a shy Harlem, New York, schoolteacher who finds herself magically transported to the Land of Oz, which resembles a fantasy version of New York City. Befriended by a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, and a Cowardly Lion, she travels through the land to seek an audience with the mysterious Wiz, whom they say has the power to take her home.
Produced by Rob Cohen and directed by Sidney Lumet, The Wiz stars Diana Ross, Michael Jackson (in his first film), Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Theresa Merritt, Thelma Carpenter, Lena Horne, and Richard Pryor. The film's story was reworked from William F. Brown's Broadway libretto by Joel Schumacher, and Quincy Jones supervised the adaptation of Charlie Smalls and Luther Vandross's songs for film. A handful of new songs, written by Jones and the songwriting team of Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, were added for the film version. Upon its original theatrical release, The Wiz was a critical and commercial failure, and marked the end of the resurgence of African-American films that began with the blaxploitation movement of the 1970s.[3][4][5] The film received four Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Original Music Score and Best Cinematography.


The Wiz proved to be a commercial flop, as the $24 million production only earned $13.6 million at the box office.[1][2][6] Though prerelease TV broadcast rights had been sold to CBS for over $10 million, in the end, the film produced a net loss of $10.4 million for Motown and Universal.[2][6] At the time, it was the most expensive film musical ever made.[15] The film's failure steered Hollywood studios away from producing the all-black film projects which had become popular during the blaxploitation era of the early to mid-1970s for several years.[3][4][5]
The film has been available on VHS home video since the 1980s, and is periodically broadcast on television, often on Thanksgiving Day.[6][16] The film was released on DVD in 1999;[17] a remastered version entitled The Wiz: 30th Anniversary Edition was released in 2008.[17][18][19] Extras on both DVD releases include a 1978 featurette about the film's production and the original theatrical trailer.[17]
Though the film underperformed during its initial theatrical run, by the beginning to the mid-80s, the movie had developed a cult following on the midnight revival circuit, and has been played on the "sing-a-long" movie musical circuit with cultish films like "Xanadu" and "Can't Stop the Music". Universal Home Video has re-released it three times as a regular DVD, a 30th Anniversary edition with a bonus CD and a Blu-ray disc in 2011. The revenue from these commercial DVDs and the continuous television syndication on TVONE, Centric, BET, Aspire and VH1 Soul networks have helped the movie finally become profitable.


Critics panned The Wiz upon its October 1978 release.[1][20] Many reviewers directed their criticism at Diana Ross, who they believed was too old to play Dorothy.[5][21][22][23] Most agreed that what had worked so successfully on stage simply didn't translate well to the screen. Hischak's Through the Screen Door: What Happened to the Broadway Musical When It Went to Hollywood criticized "Joel Schumacher's cockamamy screenplay," and called "Believe in Yourself" the score's weakest song.[21] He described Diana Ross's portrayal of Dorothy as: "cold, neurotic and oddly unattractive"; and noted that the film was "a critical and box office bust."[21] In his work History of the American Cinema, Harpole characterized the film as "one of the decade's biggest failures," and, "the year's biggest musical flop."[2] The Grove Book of Hollywood noted that "the picture finished off Diana Ross's screen career," as the film was Ross's final theatrical feature.[9][13][24] In his book Blockbuster, Tom Shone referred to The Wiz as "expensive crud."[25] In the book Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood, the author criticized the script, noting, "The Wiz was too scary for children, and too silly for adults."[1] Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz film, did not think highly of The Wiz, stating, "The Wiz is overblown and will never have the universal appeal [the 1939 film] has obtained."[26]
Michael Jackson's performance as the Scarecrow was one of the only positively reviewed elements of the film, with critics noting that Jackson possessed "genuine acting talent" and "provided the only genuinely memorable moments."[12][27] Of the results of the film, Jackson stated: "I don't think it could have been any better, I really don't."[28] In 1980, Jackson stated that his time working on The Wiz was "my greatest experience so far . . . I'll never forget that."[27] The film received a positive critique for its elaborate set design, and the book American Jewish Filmmakers noted that it "features some of the most imaginative adaptations of New York locales since the glory days of the Astaire-Rogers films."[29] In a 2004 review of the film, Christopher Null wrote positively of Ted Ross and Richard Pryor's performances.[30] However, Null's overall review of the film was critical, and he wrote that other than the song "Ease on Down the Road," "the rest is an acid trip of bad dancing, garish sets, and a Joel Schumacher-scripted mess that runs 135 agonizing minutes."[30] A 2005 piece by Hank Stuever in The Washington Post described the film as "a rather appreciable delight, even when it's a mess," and felt that the singing – especially Diana Ross' – was "a marvel".[31]
The New York Times analyzed the film within a discussion of the genre of blaxploitation: "As the audience for blaxploitation dwindled, it seemed as if "Car Wash" and "The Wiz" might be the last gasp of what had been a steadily expanding black presence in mainstream filmmaking."[32] The St. Petersburg Times noted, "Of course, it only took one flop like The Wiz (1978) to give Hollywood an excuse to retreat to safer (i.e., whiter) creative ground until John Singleton and Spike Lee came along. Yet, without blaxploitation there might not have been another generation of black filmmakers, no Denzel Washington or Angela Bassett, or they might have taken longer to emerge."[33] The Boston Globe commented, "the term 'black film' should be struck from the critical vocabulary. To appreciate just how outmoded, deceptive and limiting it is, consider the following, all of which have been described as black films, . . ." and characterized The Wiz in a list which also featured 1970s films Shaft, Blacula, and Super Fly.[34]
The Wiz was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Art Direction (Tony Walton, Philip Rosenberg, Edward Stewart, Robert Drumheller), Best Costume Design, Best Original Music Score and Best Cinematography, although it did not win in any of those categories.[35][36]

Release Date: Oct 27, 1978


Distrib: Universal

Boxoffice: $21,049,053 2014: $75,110,900