It’s not a good day for Disney. First a story about them begging for animators, now the latest word on yet another Disney self-cannibalization.
Variety is reporting that the Walt Disney Company has a remake of the classic family film Swiss Family Robinson in the works. Swiss Family Robinson was the incredibly fun tale of a family shipwrecked on a deserted island and forced to build a life there away from civilization. In the process the end up doing great things like racing ostriches and fighting off pirates with explosive coconuts. Ok, that sounds silly but seriously, I really love this movie. It occurs to me that there’s absolutely no excuse for not having this in my rather puny DVD collection. I’m off to Amazon.com to make a purchase
before I finish typing this story and thus ruining my memory of it by talking about it being redone.
Ok, I’m back. So Disney is remaking yet another classic in a desperate bid to make enough money to satiate their rioting shareholders. The big news is not so much that they’re remaking it, but that they’ve hired Jonathan Mostow to direct it. Now I really like Mostow, I’m a big fan of Terminator 3 a movie which the ever cynical internet movie snob didn’t give nearly enough credit. He did a great job following up Cameron, not an easy thing to do. His other work is pretty solid as well, U-571 is a nice little submarine movie that kills of Jon Bon Jovi. But jumping from a movie like Terminator to a family film like Robinson seems odd. When you think Swiss Family Robinson your next thought isn’t exactly “I’ll be back.” No doubt he’ll do a kickass job on those exploding coconuts.
Mostow isn’t just directing, he’ll be taking a pass at writing the script along with his partner Sam Montgomery. In doing so, he’ll drop those bad ideas about updating the story to bland, boring modern times and stick with the original 1800’s time period in which the original was set.
When he’ll fit Swiss Family in is another question entirely. His dance card is pretty full with in addition to several other projects, a fourth Terminator sequel waiting for his attention.
