Once upon a time, Hollywood was creatively bankrupt… again. The year was 2011 and poor little Hollywood didn’t know what kind of movies to make.
The heads of the major studios (including Manka Bros. – the owner of OnMedea) knew that a film adaptation of the fairy tale “Alice In Wonderland” made over $1 billion at the box office in 2010 and said “That’s a lot of money.”
So after much thought (or not), Hollywood decided to make EVERY FREAKING FAIRY TALE EVER WRITTEN INTO A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!
Come on, really?
Every day, I read about another studio doing another fairy tale adaption. And all of them are a DARK, GRITTY version that the “19th century authors originally had in mind”.
Not a fluffy Hollywood squeaky clean version that doesn’t scare our whimpy modern day kids – but a frightening and bloody tale like children used to experience when kids were tough and enjoyed waking up screaming from a horrifying nightmare because of the bedtime story they were read.
To be fair, I think it was a great idea to reimagine Red Riding Hood with a darker tone – which is certainly fitting of the story. And while the trailer looks like a cross between a perfume ad and Twilight, I still believe it’s a solid original concept and should result in strong box office. (I’ll certainly be there opening weekend.)
But then came a fairy tale adaptation tsunami (which includes 3 SNOW WHITES!) that has now completely flooded the town.
Here’s a sampling of what’s coming up:
- Jack the Giant Killer (Warner Bros.) – a gritty modern day reimagining of the classic tale.
- The Brothers Grimm: Snow White (Relativity) – gritty reimagining starring Julia Roberts as the Wicked Queen.
- Snow White and The Huntsman (Universal) – gritty reimagining starring Charlize Theron as the Wicked Queen.
- Snow White and The Seven (Disney) – sweet, no gritty, set in 19th century China.
- Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (Paramount) – Starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton (and, no doubt, various star cameos), H&G are now accomplished bounty hunters out to get the witches who nearly killed them years before.
- Beastly (CBS Films) – Beauty & The Beast set in high school. I don’t expect much from this one as I’ve already predicted the death of CBS Films in a previous blog.
- Pinnochio 3D – a stop motion reimagining of the classic fairy tale. Expect a very dark and disturbing retake on this one as it comes from the genius mind of Guillermo Del Toro. I can already imagine losing sleep after I witness the stop motion, painful transformation of the children into donkeys sequence.
- Hey Diddle Diddle (Manka Bros.) – a grim reimagining of the classic bedtime ditty set during the 1930s in a Soviet Union gulag. Why does the cow jump over the moon? Freedom.
- Grimm (NBC) – Gritty TV cop drama set in a world where the characters of Grimm’s Fairy Tales actually exist.
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And that’s just in the next couple of years. Just think if these projects make money what we’ll see next:
- Pat the Bunny – set in a post-apocalyptic cannibalistic world.
- Rumpelstiltskin – featuring the beloved garden Gnomes from Gnomeo & Juliet in their first R-rated turn.
- If You Give A Mouse A Cookie – rewritten with darker twists and turns so that it ends in murder.
Etc. etc. etc.
And the sad reality is, I won’t be able to take my five year old daughter to one of them because, if I did, she would wake up screaming in the middle of the night after witnessing Snow White disembowel one of the dwarfs (or something).
But I guess these movies aren’t made for her. They’re Fairy Tales – they’re not made for children for Christ’s sake. They’re made for the guys who go to Comic-Con. And THEY lived happily ever after.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea