The Word Garage

The Word Garage

Disney Taps Michelle Williams for the Good Witch in ‘Oz’

Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Oops, wrong production. That’s an incantation by the three witches from ‘Macbeth.’ There’s three other witches lurking about, though, the ones lined up for Disney’s ‘Oz: The Great and Powerful’: the two wicked witches and one good witch. Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis have been cast as the bad ones and, according to Variety, Disney has now tapped Michelle Williams to play Glinda, the good witch.

The film, a prequel of sorts to ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ stars James Franco as a snake oil salesman who has to flee a traveling circus and escapes in a balloon that is whisked by a tornado to an enchanted land. There he gets involved with two powerful, witchy sisters: Evanora (Weisz), the older of the two, who wants to rule the land (as the Wicked Witch of the East) and who is trying to seduce her sister, Theodora (Kunis), into becoming the Wicked Witch of the West. Williams will team with Franco to face off against her evil sisters.

Directed by Sam Raimi, the production is set to begin shooting in Michigan in July. Disney is aiming for a late 2012 or early 2013 release date.