When Tim Burton's soulless 3-D adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland became only the SIXTH film in history to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide, an immediate scrambling at Disney happened to find what other children's fantasy tales could find it's cobwebs dusted off, re-packaged with lots of sugar, and fed to the masses. And well, I did warn you this would happen but you guys all saw Wonderland anyway. You've only got yourselves to blame for this... Post-Wonderland, The Mouse quickly put together a re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty based on the villain Maleficent and brought back Wonderland's writer/director pair Linda Woolverton and Tim Burton to develop and attempt to court Angelina Jolie to star. More recently they paid a huge seven figure sum to TheDevil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna to come up with a similar re-imagining of Cinderella. Then came news of The Wizard of Oz 3-D prequel The Great and Powerful Oz - which right now is Disney's top development priority, with Robert Downey Jr attached to star and an offer out to several directors. Now Deadline report that Indie studio Relativity Media are getting in on the act. Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) is spearheading an 'edgy 3-D re-imagining of Snow White', which will creatively be a million miles away from the animated Disney classic, and more like the dark fable The Brothers Grimm originally wrote, allegedly. "This is not your grandfather's Snow White," and is "edgy more comedy" promises Ratner. DEAR LORD. Seriously though, it's not that awful idea to make say a R-rated horror movie out of Snow White (like Appian Way are doing for Little Red Riding Hood) - though of course this won't be that tale, and Ratner wouldn't have been the man to give it to us anyway... Melissa Wallack (The Dallas Buyer Club, Bill) has wrote the screenplay titled Brothers Grimm: Snow White, and the pick-up of her script (now being fast-tracked) is likely to bag her a low seven figure sum. Ratner says;
"Melisa went back to the 500 year old folk tale and put in some of the things that were missing from Walt Disney's film. His dwarves were miners, and here they are robbers. There is also a dragon that was in the original folk tale. Walt made one of the great movies of all time, but ours is edgy and there is more comedy. The original, made for its time, was soft compared to what we're going to do."
Jeez. Ratner takes down Walt Disney for being 'too soft', but the thing is - it sounds like he is going the comedy route with this movie. If he really had some balls, Ratner would go shit crazy, blood drenched, strictly R-Rated that no mother would dare take their child to the cinema in fear of scarring them for life. I mean it's already kinda of been doing as far as I understand with the 1997 T.V. movie Snow White: A Tale of Terror that starred Sigourney Weaver, Sam Neil and Monica Keena. I haven't actually seen it, but it's what I'm talking about. Ratner won't go this way. His will be a half-risque/half-safe (think Enchanted with swearing and adult humour) and nobody will go and see it because they will be confused by just what the hell he has cooked up. Is this the end of it then, or are we just beginning and Cinderella, Oz, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White is just the precursor to dozens more re-imaginings?