Oz: The Great and Powerful Movie Cast, Plot and Everything to Know

Key Facts

• GRAMMY® Award–winning superstar Mariah Carey has recorded the song, "Almost Home,"
• There are over 3,000 props used in "Oz The Great and Powerful," with 1400 of them manufactured specifically for the film. These do not include the 5000 coins Prop master Russell Bobbitt had made especially to fill Oz's treasure chest. One side of the coin is stamped with an image of the Yellow Brick Road and on the other side there is an image of author L. Frank Baum.
• James Franco, who plays Oscar Diggs (aka Oz), had to learn magic tricks in order to accurately portray his small-time, circus magician character. He came to set two weeks early so he could work with Las Vegas magician Lance Burton. Working every day, Franco learned tricks involving doves and fire as well as how to pull objects out of hats and how to make things levitate.
• The fantasy world of Oz The Great and Powerful was brought to life by Academy Award®–winning production designer Robert Stromberg. In all, Stromberg designed 24 full sets plus several partial sets, bringing the total to around 30. Stromberg created such iconic sets as the famed Yellow Brick Road and Emerald City, all freshly designed and imagined, along with such highly anticipated, new designs as the witch's Throne Room, the Whimsie Woods (where Oz meets Theodora), the Dark Forest, which introduces Glinda the good witch in the story, and China Town, whose inhabitants are made up entirely of porcelain.
• Imagines the origins of the Wizard of Oz's wizard, who debuted in author L. Frank Baum's first book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Baum, who wrote 14 novels between 1900-1920, all set in the fantasyland he so vividly created, never fully portrayed the wizard's background. Oz The Great and Powerful is a cinematic prequel to Baum's books.