If you really think about the fantasy and themes in the core story of Peter Pan, you’ll realize it’s one of the most rich pieces of source material used for film in a long time. Not that any of the Peter Pan films have really done it justice (although I loved Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams in Hook), but the basic story of Peter Pan is really a fantastic one.
The good folks over at The Hollywood North Report and now saying that New Line has picked up an option on a new Peter Pan movie… but with a bit of a twist to it:
New Line has acquired horror pitch Pan by writer Ben Magid in a preemptive bid and set it up with Brooklyn Weaver’s Energy Entertainment banner according to Variety. The story is a backward take on J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan with supernatural elements in which the Pan character’s a villain tracked by police captain named Hook.
Well… that sounds interesting… I think. Feels weird though. It’s almost like saying “let’s make a new Star Wars where Luke is a homicidal maniac in New York and is being hunted by the heroic detective Ben “Darth” Vader”. It doesn’t quite fit. But hey, I’m all for studios trying something new. I’ll give it a shot.
So is this going to be a drama then? Any names attached to this film? It sounds really interesting…. I just think they need to right people to get it done, and get it done well.
This sounds horrible! I love the movies Hook and Finding Neverland but enough is enough.
–RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
are you kidding? this makes so much more sense. now bear in mind i’m sure the book didn#t suggest to portray it like this, but peter pan could be a demented paedophile, abducting kids… captain hook is a bad ass take-no-prisoners cop/vigilante out to get the guy who kidnpped/killed his kid… and took his hand in the process.
what do you guys think? have i got a future in hollywood?
And yes borloff, these all reek of “Fables”, which they might as well just option too.
I imagine we’ll be a seeing a number of films mixing fantasy and horror in the coming year. The Script Black List (a collection of scripts that werent picked up by anyone but have been widely read and considered exceptional) included several films this year with this same genre blending.
“Killing Time On Carnival Row” was the best of that lot, which is a Sin City meets Harry Potter, but had been passed over too many times because it was considered to require a far too ridiculous budget. Last I’d heard, Guillermo del Toro is now attached to direct, which would be glorrrrrrrious.
If we could get a short spurt here with a few of these Fairy-Noir films but have only high calliber types like del Toro attached, I’d be fairly excited.
Well that sounds wierd as hell. If anybody else likes twisted up fairy tales set in the modern world, try reading “Fables” from the DC/Vertigo imprint. Great stuff.
Good point Mojo
If you look at it from a slightly different angle, I think this idea seems inevitable. Don’t look at it as Pan being the villain, but rather as Hook being a more sympathetic character.
Now think about the success that Wicked has enjoyed on Broadway. (And, really, the success that the author, Gregory Maguire, has had re-writing other fairy tales using the same roadmap.)
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood took notice.