Sam Raimi, the director of Oz: The Great and Powerful, joined the stars of the film, Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis, and producer Joe Roth, at a press conference at Comic-Con to chat about the upcoming film. In the Wizard of Oz prequel, Kunis plays Theodora (who eventually becomes the Wicked Witch of the West), while Williams plays her counterpart, Glinda (the Good Witch), and each shared about their experience of working on the fantasy blockbuster. Raimi also gave us a few more details about the movie (the trailer for which was also unveiled at Comic-Con!) and about star James Franco, but it wasn’t all Oz talk — Williams also gamely chatted about a Dawson’s Creek reunion!

On the story:
Sam Raimi: “This is a very straightforward family picture. I would say it’s a very classically Disney type of movie. It’s all about these characters and their interactions with each other, the friendships they make. How some characters are sinners, how they hurt others, how those sins can grow. It’s about finally recognizing the things you do in this world have consequences, and how to be the best person you can be is really the story of this film. That’s the most exciting kind of story for me, the ones that have character growth, and I think James Franco’s character has a little bit of character growth in this film.”

On the honor of working with director Sam Raimi:
Mila Kunis: “Listen, Sam is fantastic. I don’t know where to begin. I would do craft service for Sam if he asked me to.”
SR: “Would you do craft service?”
MK: “Yes, Sam Raimi! . . . He’s so supportive of everybody around him, of his crew, and of his cast. He is incredibly inspiring to work with. You go to work and you want to make him happy.”
Michelle Williams: “I had never made a movie like this before. I’ve never made such a big movie before. I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I didn’t know if the things that concern me, Sam would have time for, or patience for. Not only did he have time and patience in the beginning when we were rehearsing, he had patience for them on the 17th hour of the sixth day. For me it was a very holistic experience; it was a real melding of my work life and my personal life. My film family and my real family.”

On working with beautiful actresses like Williams and Kunis:
SR: “Wow [growls jokingly]. It’s great to work with them because they’re great actresses. As beautiful as they are, that would become meaningless if they weren’t brilliant actresses and that’s what we needed for the story. They both have complex roles and complex interactions with the other characters in the piece and they just do a beautiful job performing them. It’s very funny and realistic and they are a pleasure to watch. And yes, they are not hard on the eyes, those girls.”

Raimi, on how Franco has changed since working on Spider-Man:
SR: “He’s a great collaborator. James was much less collaborative when I first worked with him. He was a real serious actor, I think he still had his James Dean hat on; he was doing it his way. I worked with him with certain limitations. We couldn’t communicate about everything as deeply as we did on this picture. [In this movie] there was a great sense of openness, collaboration, and patience. Now that James is a filmmaker, he understands all the things that go into a shot. He’s developed that patience.”

On the differences between this movie and The Wizard of Oz:
SR: “We were careful to respect it. Really ours is a different story. It leads up to it — how a slightly selfish man became a slightly more selfless man. It’s not really remaking The Wizard of Oz, so it wasn’t a problem we had to deal with. We just nodded lovingly toward it.”
Joe Roth: “In the simplistic parlance of movies, it’s a prequel, not a remake.”

On whether there are flying monkeys like in The Wizard of Oz:
SR: “In the teaser they showed today, the Wicked Witch has an army of flying baboons. We’re actually still developing them, but the teaser demanded that they come out right now. There is also a flying monkey in the story, different than the baboons, a nice flying monkey, so don’t worry.”

On whether the movie is funny:
SR: “We have a main character, James Franco, who is a little selfish as the story begins. As he runs up against those he admires, such as Glinda, his shortcomings are a source of humor.”

Mila, on paying homage to her iconic character, the Wicked Witch:
MK: “I wasn’t paying homage. You can’t. You could never replicate it, nor would you ever want to. She’s so iconic, so fantastic in her own right. I was scared going into it. Truly, I was frightened. What do you do? The only thing I could do was be honest to the character. I was given the gift by Sam of having a backstory of why she is the way she is. I went in playing her as real as possible. As long as you believe, it, I believe it, and hopefully everybody else will believe it.”

On whether the book Wicked was taken into consideration in developing this movie:
JR: “No. We were just using Baum’s books as a road map. We stayed with the thesis: who is that guy behind the curtain?”

Williams, on the possibility of a Dawson’s Creek reunion:
MW: “I would very happily do a reunion show. I don’t know what it would be . . . my character dies in the end. So there are certain limitations for me. It’s either I come back as a ghost or am shot through a gauzy, hazy light, as my 19-year-old self. [But] at some point, I hope it does happen.”

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One of the movies garnering the most buzz at Comic-Con this year is Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful. It doesn’t hit theaters until March 2013, but fans got a brief look at some footage from the film during Disney’s panel on Thursday.

Right after the panel, director Sam Raimi, actresses Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams and producer Joe Roth spoke to The Hollwood Reporter first in THR’s exclusive video lounge.

Roth said the footage was well received by the crowd of thousands. Kunis said she was surprised she didn’t see more people in Oz-themed costumes in the crowd.

“I wish they were a little crazier, to be honest,” Kunis told THR. “All things considered, we got one mad hatter, and some blue ladies.”

The film, which is a prequel to the events of the famous Wizard of Oz film, stars James Franco as Oz, and Williams as the famous good witch Glinda, and Kunis as a less-good witch, Theodora.

When THR asked what Williams and Kunis enjoyed about their roles, Williams said it was simple for her. “I just enjoyed being a delight to all little girls,” she told THR.

“I can’t say the same about my character,” said Kunis with a laugh. “What did I enjoy? I think the idea of being able to understand a character that I grew up loving so much, and truly ground her in a way that makes her seem real.”

When THR asked Kunis and Williams if they could describe a scene that was very memorable to them, Kunis pointed to her work with Williams. “We didn’t have very many scenes, and there’s one scene in particular in Glinda’s castle that I think was really fun,” she said.

Director Raimi told THR that he hope audiences get to experience “a love story and a growth of a character from somebody that is somewhat selfish to selfless” when they watch Oz.

“I hope they feel exhilarated by the goodness in Michelle’s performance and the wickedness in certain others performances and they feel like they have been on a real, grand richly detailed fairytale,” he added.

Kunis also shared a freaky fan interaction she had at Comic-Con a few years ago, while promoting the film Extract. It turns out the studio had created a promotional event involving women dressing up as her character in the film.

“It was the one time I ventured out downstairs, and there were like six women dressed up as me from Extract,” she said. “That was probably hands down the weirdest strangest experience in my life.”

THR couldn’t help but ask if Sam Raimi, who directed the Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man trilogy if he had seen the new Amazing Spider-Man film, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Marc Webb.

“I haven’t seen it yet, but I hear it’s great,” he said to THR. “I really want to see it because it’s in 3D and our film is also in 3D so I want to see what the director and the team did with it.”

Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis have always been bewitching, but in next year’s “Oz the Great and Powerful,” they’re really going to cast a spell on movie audiences. Williams is taking on the role of Glinda the good witch, while Kunis is playing the ever-so-wicked Theodora. But in talking to Yahoo! Movies today at San Diego Comic-Con for their first sit-down interview about the movie, both actresses made it clear that this is not the “Wizard of Oz” everyone grew up with.
“It’s a very different movie,” Kunis said when asked how their new project compares to the 1939 original. The film tells the story of Oscar Diggs (played by James Franco), a disreputable chap who gets whisked away from a circus in Kansas to the magical land of Oz. It takes place long before Dorothy dropped in with her house and her little dog Toto, too, so there won’t be any ruby slippers in this story. Oscar winner Rachel Weisz completes the witchy triumvirate as Evanora.
Since this was the first time for the two to talk about the movie, they were both cagey about letting details slip. Apparently, their two characters don’t share much screen time, and Kunis said, “we spent more time [together] off set than we did on set.” When asked how they spent their time, Williams smirked and only answered, “Trailer talk.”
Williams said that the character of Glinda was “a one-dimensional character” in the original movie, but promises this new take will offer insights into why she acted the way she did. “There was a reason Glinda didn’t go down the yellow brick road,” Williams said, hinting that it will be one of the big reveals in the movie. “I really loved being the good witch,” Williams said, specifically the reactions she got from children when she was in costume.
As for Kunis, she confessed “I don’t know what I’m allowed to say” when asked if she’d be looking a little green as the Wicked Witch. But she admitted, “I did get to cackle,” to which Williams responded, “And what a cackle!” Kunis said, “There’s a transformation amongst all the characters whether it be physical or emotional.” She added that unlike Williams, “I don’t get the pleasure of little kids walking past me and [smiling]. I’ll just say that.”
While Kunis wouldn’t go into details about her “transformation,” the first trailer for the film shows a green-skinned hand clawing at a table. It’s safe to assume Kunis should probably avoid getting splashed by buckets of water if she doesn’t want to melt.
“Oz the Great and Powerful,” directed by Sam Raimi (“Spider-Man”), opens March 8, 2013.
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