Now before I get into this, I should mention that I suspect this news story was originally written as a joke. I don’t know exactly if the “Sydney Sunny Press” is a real newspaper or not, but this seems way too ridiculous for anyone to try and pass it off as truth. Surprisingly, for once the internet seems to have debunked the so-called rumour before it had a chance to spread throughout the blogosphere. (Then again, perhaps everyone knew it was a joke from the start, and Quint over at Ain’t It Cool News is the only one who thought it might be taken seriously in the first place.)

So according to this story, Warner Bros. signed Peter Jackson to direct a remake of The Wizard of Oz. The budget is a paltry $1 billion, and the film is expected to be entirely computer generated. Andy Serkis will play all of the characters, with the exception of The Wizard, who may be portrayed by none other than Tom Hanks. Jackson is quoted as saying, “We were going to use an actual dog to play Toto, but we thought a CG dog would look more real.” Come on now, someone thought this was real? It reads like something straight out of The Onion! Clearly it’s false (and yes, they’ve actually confirmed that with Jackson) but still somewhat amusing I suppose.