Samuel M. Raimi is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known for directing the first three films in the Evil Dead franchise (1981–present) and the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007). He also directed the superhero movie Darkman (1990), the revisionist western The Quick and the Dead (1995), the neo-noir crime thriller A Simple Plan (1998), the supernatural thriller The Gift (2000), the supernatural horror Drag Me to Hell (2009), the Disney fantasy Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), and the Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

Oz the Great and Powerful is a 2013 American fantasy adventure film directed by Sam Raimi and written by David Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell Kapner from a story by Kapner. Based on L. Frank Baum's early 20th century Oz books and set 20 years before the events of the original 1900 novel, the film is a spiritual prequel to the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, The Wizard of Oz. Starring James Franco in the title role, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, Bill Cobbs, Joey King, William Bock, and Tony Cox, the film tells the story of Oscar Diggs, a deceptive magician who arrives in the Land of Oz and encounters three witches: Theodora, Evanora, and Glinda. Oscar is then enlisted to restore order in Oz while struggling to resolve conflicts with the witches and himself.