Dorothy’s Granddaughter Braves the Yellow Brick Road in Wickedly Dark Wizard of Oz Horror Reimagining (Exclusive)

Published by EW on Jan 08, 2026 6:00 AM

Dorothy’s Granddaughter Braves the Yellow Brick Road in Wickedly Dark Wizard of Oz Horror Reimagining (Exclusive)

“Gale: The Yellow Brick Road” director says his vision of L. Frank Baum’s fantasy realm is “a world shaped by decay, memory, and emotional fracture.”

EW
Wesley Stenzel
January 8, 2026 8:00 a.m. ET

We are definitely not in Kansas anymore, folks.

Entertainment Weekly can exclusively premiere the full-length trailer for Gale: Yellow Brick Road, a new horror film inspired by L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.

The trailer features narration from Emily Gale (Chloë Crump), the young granddaughter of Dorothy Gale (Karen Swan), who sees visions of the fantasy world that her grandmother described decades prior. We see glimpses of nightmarish versions of classic Oz characters, including the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and at least one wicked witch.

“Gale: Yellow Brick Road was inspired by the darker themes already embedded in L. Frank Baum’s original Oz novels, which have only ever been lightly explored,” executive producer Dane Petrali tells EW. “And by a desire to respectfully expand that material into a deeper and more unsettling vision of Oz than audiences have seen before.”

In the trailer, Emily explains that she was told that Oz was “just a story — a fairy tale my grandmother dreamed up after the storm.” (Though it’s not seen in the trailer, it’s safe to assume that the storm in question is the tornado that swept Dorothy into Oz in Baum’s original story.)

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Filmmaker Daniel Alexander first entered Oz with his short Gale – Stay Away From Oz in 2023. The director widened the project to a feature-length film to create Yellow Brick Road.

“Expanding Gale: Yellow Brick Road into a feature meant preserving its emotional core while deepening Oz into a darker, more immersive world,” he tells EW. “Oz in Gale: Yellow Brick Road draws from realism rather than fantasy, presenting a world shaped by decay, memory, and emotional fracture.”

Alexander’s film is part of a larger Oz horror saga that could include two sequels. “Gale: Yellow Brick Road is the first film in a planned trilogy, with future chapters revealing more of Oz and its characters,” Petrali says.

Gale: Yellow Brick Road hits theaters via Fathom Entertainment for one night only on Feb. 11. The film will feature an exclusive making-of featurette offering a glimpse behind the curtain.