It seems that a new star and director are circling a brand new prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Production Weekly reported on their Twitter feed that Sam Mendes is in talks to direct Oz The Great and Powerful, and that Robert Downey Jr. was in talks to play the Wizard.

The only other thing the tweet mentioned was that Mitchell Kapner had written the script. CHUD dug a little deeper and discovered that the project was actually retitled from Kapner's original project, Brick, which is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz told from the Wizard's perspective, showing how he came to be the powerful Wizard.

The project was originally set up for producer Joe Roth at Disney, but it's unclear whether both the studio and producer were still involved. We'll be sure to keep you posted on any further news surrounding this new project as soon as we have more information.