When it comes to live action fairy tales, why should Disney have all the fun?!
You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of Warner Bros' Pan...
Thanks to decades of Disney Animation, the Mouse House is the trusted brand when it comes to fairy
tales - yet the fairy tales themselves are actually in the public domain. The only thing
Disney owns the rights to are the elements that THEY added in their animated - and now
live action - adaptations. And as Warner Bros tries to build their own superhero division
like Disney's Marvel, they're also trying to launch their own live action fairy tale
division. Pan is hitting theaters first, followed by Tarzan and King Arthur in 2016 and Jungle
Book Origins in 2017. Now ideally Pan - which is actually co-produced by Greg Berlanti,
who overseas Warner Bros' popular DC comics TV shows - would set the stage for all these
upcoming films but, well, Pan has had a rough time of it. When the picture first came together
with Hugh Jackman as the mysterious pirate Blackbeard and Hanna director Joe Wright at
the helm, it seemed like a very strong contender indeed - although casting Garrett Hedlund,
who's promised stardom has yet to materialize, as a the young Hook was somewhat worriesome.
But when Rooney Mara was cast as the native american princess Tiger Lily, it shook the
picture to the core. Audiences, and the media, went into a frenzy, and Warner Bros has tried
to repeatedly defend Mara's casting by saying they went with the best actress for the role,
regardless of skin color. Also, it's worth noting that Mara has a very similar look to
Keira Knightley, who was director Wright's leading lady in Pride and Prejudice, Atonement
and Anna Karenina. Sometimes, directors just favor a certain look when it comes to their
leading ladies - although to be fair Wright is married to a woman of Indian decent, and
one has to wonder how she felt about his Tiger Lily casting... Anyway, while for decades
Hollywood has gotten away with whitewashing films, the recent implosion of Fox's Exodus
has got to have Warner Bros worried. And their confidence in Pan does seem shaken, as while
it was originally set to be a big summer release, Warner Bros blinked and moved the pic to October
when none other than Disney scheduled Ant-Man to open opposite the picture. Now it does
have an entire weekend to itself, but Sony's Goosebumps is debuting the very next weekend.
And as for adult moviegoers, not only is awards season starting up but the very genre-y Crimson
Peak - almost a gothic fairy tale itself - also opens the very next weekend. But still, at
least publicly, Warner Bros says they're eager to make a Pan sequel and soon, before newcomer
Levi Miller gets too big for the role. Uh-oh! Too late! So much for "I won't grow up!" Damn
child actors and their hormones...
Maybe that's why Disney animated these fairy tales in the first place, huh?