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The Wizard of Oz is a 1939, book-based musical fantasy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The film is based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel titled "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Directed primarily by Victor Fleming, who left the project to take over the troubled production of book-based film "Gone with the Wind", the film stars Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, and Margaret Hamilton. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf wrote the screenplay.
Production on the film began after the success of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which demonstrated that films based on popular children's stories and fairytales could be profitable. In January 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum's beloved novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn had originally considered making the film as a vehicle for Eddie Cantor, who was under contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions, and had planned to cast him as the Scarecrow.
The film opened nationwide on August 25, 1939. According to MGM records, the film's initial release earned $2,048,000 in the United States and $969,000 globally, totaling $3,017,000 in earnings. However, due to its high production costs, along with marketing, distribution, and other expenses, the studio lost a total of $1,145,000. It wasn't until a 1949 re-release that the film turned a profit, earning an additional $1.5 million (about $15 million in 2023). Christopher Finch, author of Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland, noted, "Fantasy is always a risk at the box office. The film had been enormously successful as a book, and it had also been a major stage hit, but previous attempts to bring it to the screen had been dismal failures." He also mentioned that following the film's success, Garland signed a new contract with MGM, significantly increasing her salary and making her one of the top ten box-office stars in the United States.The film was re-released domestically in 1955, with subsequent re-releases between 1989 and 2019 grossing $25,173,032 worldwide. This brings the total worldwide gross to $29,690,032.
Source: Wikipedia
Production on the film began after the success of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which demonstrated that films based on popular children's stories and fairytales could be profitable. In January 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the rights to L. Frank Baum's beloved novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn had originally considered making the film as a vehicle for Eddie Cantor, who was under contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions, and had planned to cast him as the Scarecrow.
The film opened nationwide on August 25, 1939. According to MGM records, the film's initial release earned $2,048,000 in the United States and $969,000 globally, totaling $3,017,000 in earnings. However, due to its high production costs, along with marketing, distribution, and other expenses, the studio lost a total of $1,145,000. It wasn't until a 1949 re-release that the film turned a profit, earning an additional $1.5 million (about $15 million in 2023). Christopher Finch, author of Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland, noted, "Fantasy is always a risk at the box office. The film had been enormously successful as a book, and it had also been a major stage hit, but previous attempts to bring it to the screen had been dismal failures." He also mentioned that following the film's success, Garland signed a new contract with MGM, significantly increasing her salary and making her one of the top ten box-office stars in the United States.The film was re-released domestically in 1955, with subsequent re-releases between 1989 and 2019 grossing $25,173,032 worldwide. This brings the total worldwide gross to $29,690,032.
Source: Wikipedia
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