If reports are true and actress Dakota Fanning is set to star in a remake of “The Wizard of Oz,” I vehemently don’t want to follow the yellow brick road.

Let me start out by saying I haven’t seen the original 1939 film in a decade. I genuinely remember it as being a good movie, but odds are it won’t faze me the same way now as a twentysomething college student as it did a whimsical youngster. For me, the clearest resonance is that it’s an iconic film and has been for decades in people’s minds. It’s an eternal pop culture phenomenon.

It’s one thing to even attempt to re-make, re-imagine, re-anything an untouchable film like “Oz,” but to cast the plainer-than-white-rice Fanning in a role as Dorothy’s granddaughter seems blasphemous: Sacrilegious, even. Fanning, whose two notable career moves have been “I Am Sam” and partaking in a rape scene in “Hounddog,” has a charisma comparable to Ben Stein. She was a cute kid who could act well, but her flame fizzled out fast, Jonathan Lipnicki-style.

In an interview with UK’s “The Guardian,” “Spawn” creator and new “Oz” co-producer Todd McFarlane said Dororthy’s granddaughter will be “much closer to the Ripley character from ‘Alien’ than a helpless, singing girl.” If there’s one thing that I could never, ever imagine, it’s a straight-laced Fanning trekking across Oz with three thugs and a pit bull named Toto killing flying monkeys first and asking questions later.

How can you re-imagine the wonderful world of Oz as “darker and more action-packed?” Have these producers spent a bit too long frolicking in the poppy fields?

It’s unfair not to point out previous “Oz” reincarnations such as “The Wiz” with Diana Ross and
“Return To Oz” with Fairuza Balk, but neither were a straight up “new” version of the original musical. This new production seems to promise to follow the original L. Frank Baum story
framework, but ventures off into new terrain to satisfy the fantasy world fans of “Twilight” and beyond, by setting the story in present day. Is the family still going to be farmers, or will they be investment bankers? Is water enough to kill the Wicked Witch or is Dorothy going to need firepower? Is the Tin Man still going to need oil or will a Red Bull suffice?

Once you try to fix something that isn’t broke, problems obviously arise. Just ask the makers behind the modern-day versions of “Bewitched,” “The Bad News Bears” and “Alfie.”

By jostling the legacy “The Wizard Of Oz” has built for the last 70 years, the producers behind this imminent travesty will not find me somewhere over the rainbow – or anywhere near it, for that matter.

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