Disney might own the Muppets, but it's still not easy being green

This week's Entertainment Weekly (it's my husband's subscription, I swear!) had an article about the Wizard of Oz movie prequel, which I didn't really care about but read part of anyway because procrastination is my friend I was bored. I didn't actually finish the article (TL;Not going to watch the movie), but I did come across something that made me go O_O.

According to the article (which I can't link to, so you'll have to take my word for it), even though it was legal for Disney to create Oz the Great and Powerful, because the original novel by L. Frank Baum was published in 1900 and therefore is in the public domain, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer owns the copyright for the 1939 The Wizard of Oz film based on the book and apparently sent lawyers to the prequel movie set to make sure that Disney didn't actually copy anything from the film. Okay, sure. Not unreasonable. Except that one of the things MGM's lawyers wanted to make certain Disney didn't copy was the shade of green of the Wicked Witch's skin. [Emphasis mine because WTF?]

Roughly four and a half shades darker than Kermit.

That particular fact was so WTF-ish for me that I've been thinking about it for several days. And while yes, I can sort of vaguely understand the concept behind why MGM would worry about something like that, what I still can't understand is the point.

( Follow the legal shade of yellow brick road )