Thursday, March 05, 2015

Yet Another Remake

It ain't just Disney doing the redo thing.

MGM has acquired the rights to Robert C. O'Brien's children's novel "Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh" for a live action/CGI animation hybrid adaptation. Michael Berg (Ice Age 5) has been hired to write the screenplay, which will focus on an origin story involving an "imperiled mouse protagonist" who befriends a group of lab rats as they become "hyper-intelligent." ...

The novel, which was first published in 1971 and won the Newberry Medal a year later, was adapted into the 1982 animated feature The Secret of NIMH, with a voice cast that included Derek Jacobi, Dom DeLuise, Shannen Doherty and Wil Wheaton. The animated adaptation spawned the 1998 sequel The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue. MGM hopes to start a franchise with this new live action/CGI hybrid adaptation. Paramount previously tried to relaunch the franchise, but it never came to fruition. ...

Everybody is going back to musty library shelves to find themselves a (hoped-for) tent pole.

It almost feels like desperation time, reaching down to properties that didn't set the box office on fire thirty-plus years ago, but hey! Maybe this time it will be different!

If M-G-M still held the rights to Gone With The WInd, maybe they could rethink the movie as an animated property: Rhett Butler as a wolf, Scarlett as a fox, and Mammy as a tubby, hectoring badger. Get Robert Lopez and Kristen-Anderson Lopez to write a batch of songs, and you'll be all set.

h/t Chris Sobieniak.

3 comments:

hamletprimeiro said...

Steve, I think that you just get a new job at MGM with this animated Gone with the Wind pitch.

Unknown said...

Wasn't the don bluth version bad enough? Maybe this time they'lol make the book. Or at least a film worth watching.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Thanks for the name drop!

If M-G-M still held the rights to Gone With The WInd, maybe they could rethink the movie as an animated property: Rhett Butler as a wolf, Scarlett as a fox, and Mammy as a tubby, hectoring badger. Get Robert Lopez and Kristen-Anderson Lopez to write a batch of songs, and you'll be all set.

As long as the wolf gets to say those immortal words ("Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!") I'm fine with this (if it worked for a rat before)!

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