He’s delivered the goods with his upcoming version of Disney’s 1977 movie Pete’s Dragon, and director David Lowery will next set to work on rejigging the Mouse House’s fantastic Peter Pan movie into a live-action epic. The director spoke with the U.S. website Collider about his plans.
“It’s going to be very similar to the original,” he said. “We went back and looked at the original animated film, which I hadn’t seen in quite a few years. I had forgotten how short it was. It’s 76 minutes, or something. And then, we read J.M. Barrie’s story, which I also hadn’t read in a long time. And we looked at the play that he also wrote. They’re quite similar. The Disney movie was a very clear adaptation of the original.”
“So, I think we can do justice to both by just telling the original story. We don’t want to do anything revisionist. We don’t want to do anything where we are changing what people love about it. I have zero interest in presenting an origin story for Peter Pan. We just want to stick to what is great about it, but at the same time, filter it through my perspective.”
Disney are obviously on a bit of a mission to remake all of their classic animated movies, and versions of Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast and many more are on the way. Pete’s Dragon, along with Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book, which were both released this year (Pete’s Dragon is out this Friday), are two of the best of those adaptations following some pretty decent turns for Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (released as Maleficent a couple of years back).
The original Peter Pan from Disney was released back in 1953, and Warner Bros. had a crack at the story, which was more of a prequel, just last year. It didn’t fare too well with critics or audiences, but we rather liked it.
More on the new Peter Pan as we get it.
