Oz the Great and Powerful director Sam Raimi reveals amazing magic skills

Sam Raimi has been talking about the challenges of revisiting a classic with upcoming prequel, ‘Oz The Great And Powerful’ – but aside from that, he’s been showing off his surprising party trick: conjuring a gold coin from nowhere.

Check out the video above for Raimi’s money-making magic (around the 4:17 mark), before he swiftly makes it vanish again.

Easy come, easy go.

[Related story: Oz The Great And Powerful sequel already in the works?]
[Related story: James Franco learned to pull rabbits from hats for Oz role]

Before the ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Evil Dead’ director started going all smoke and mirrors, he told Yahoo! Movies about the intimidating task of reinventing the classic ‘Wizard Of Oz’:

“I didn’t want to upset the fans… in fact I didn’t even want to read the script at first,” revealed Raimi, “I said: ‘That’s a prequel, I don’t want to have anything to do with it because I don’t want to tread on the good name of that great picture.’”

Raimi then told us how he came round to the idea, and why he thinks the 1939 L. Frank Baum movie needed to be revisited: “Not to compare Baum to Shakespeare, but Shakespeare’s work, the same thing,  the words are beautiful, the plays are brilliant, and Baum’s work also deserves new interpretations of his stories.”

Next up we spoke to stars James Franco and Zach Braff about what it was like working with Sam a second time round, after he appeared in the director’s ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy as Harry Osborn: “One of the things about Sam is he identifies very closely with his lead characters,” said Franco.

“On the ‘Spider-Man’ films he indentified with Peter Parker, but my character was trying to kill Peter Parker! And so as nice a guy as Sam is, at times I felt like I was getting a little bit of the cold shoulder,” he laughed.

“When we got to ‘Oz’ and I was playing the lead character, I finally felt the full sunlight of Sam.”

Michelle Williams gave us her thoughts about working with Raimi too, as well as the difference between performing in a big budget Disney movie, and her smaller indie projects such as ‘Blue Valentine’ and ‘My Week With Marilyn’:

“I didn’t really even consider how big it was, or that it would be a big movie,” she said, “I just knew the moment that I met Sam. He’s the consummate family man, he has five children of his own, and he makes his sets feel like little families.”

Awww. Check out her video above to also hear how she feels about ‘Blue Valentine’ co-star Ryan Gosling describing her as “a cross between Bridget Bardot and Clint Eastwood.”

‘Oz The Great And Powerful’, directed by Sam Raimi, and starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams and Zach Braff, is out now in the UK.