The Mouse House Is Too Cheesy For The Diary of Anne Frank Or Any Literature Classic
Posted by: Nikki Dowling
Filed in:
entertainment
11:30AM, Thursday August 13th 2009
Disney is teaming up with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet to make a movie out of The Diary of Anne Frank. Seeing the words “Disney” and “Anne Frank” in the same sentence seems a little strange to me. They know this one doesn’t end with the prince and princess living happily ever after, right? Hopefully, Disney is going live-action and not looking to cast Miley Cyrus in the lead. [Variety] It may be too late for Anne Frank, but here are a few other classics we’d advise Disney to stay away from.
- Animal Farm: I’m sure Disney would love the idea of making yet another movie about talking animals, but George Orwell’s satire would be lost on a bunch of drooling two-year-olds.
- War and Peace: We’d be kind of interested to see how Disney would costume the characters in this Russian epic novel, but they’d probably cut a few hundred pages from Leo Tolstoy’s classic.
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Surely, Disney shouldn’t option Harriet Beecher Stowe’s controversial race tome. But I didn’t think they’d attempt Anne Frank, either.
- To Kill a Mockingbird: We heart this book by Harper Lee. Don’t do it, Disney. If you do, Vanessa Hudgens cannot play Scout.
- Justine: Disney should know better than to try and make a movie out of the Marquis de Sade’s erotic classic. We can hear kids asking, “Mommy, what’s bondage?”
- Night: Disney should stay away from Holocaust flicks altogether.
- Where the Red Fern Grows: In this children’s book about animals, ninety percent of the main characters don’t live. We hear the sound of third graders being traumatized.
What book would you be nervous to see in Disney’s hands?
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alleigh25
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 11:03 am: [report]
Disney used to have some serious live-action movies, like The Color of Friendship, which dealt with Apartheid. Still…I don’t know.
The statement about third graders being traumatized by Where the Red Fern Grows made me laugh though. We read that book in third grade and…yeah. It was horrible. I don’t know whose brilliant idea that was.
Riley
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 11:52 am: [report]
Yeah, what better way to pay tribute to victims of the Holocaust then to water-down the real story and make it fluffy enough for children to sit through.
Maybe they are trying to make up for Walt Disney’s anti-Semitism?
I want to see a Disney version of “It” or pretty much any adaptation of a Stephen King novel.
LayD
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 12:16 pm: [report]
Didn’t Disney already do"Where teh Red Fern Grows”? They at least used to play the movie all the time on the Disney Channel when I was growing up. Not all Disney is singing birds and prince charmings, think “Old Yeller”, that does not end well. I am sure if they do do “Anne Frank” it will be done very well and be of quality.
Riley
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 12:32 pm: [report]
You can’t paint an adequate picture of why her family is hiding without showing what they are hiding from. I think Disney may be a little reluctant to show death camps and Jewish men, women and children being rounded up and pushed onto trains like animals to be gassed, burned or experimented on later.
Old Yeller was a sad story for about 10 minutes; he gets rabies and bam its over. There is no silver lining in the Diary of Anne Frank, they hide and live in terror for two years and then get caught in the end. Anne dies in a concentration camp.
Coral
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 03:12 pm: [report]
I don’t see anything wrong with Where the Red Fern Grows being turned into a Disney movie. Although I don’t typically like Disney to begin with. After all Beauty in the Beast portrays an abusive relationship between the Beast and Belle, and showing that Belle can successfully transform this abusive beast into her prince charming—which obviously does not happen in real life. So I think teaching kids that 90% of the animals in the story die is much more tame than the classic, Beauty in the Beast.
*sam*
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 04:02 pm: [report]
“A child called ‘It’”—I just don’t see how *anyone* could make that suitable for a young audience.. EVER. (unless of course, it’s built into an abuse-awareness curriculum of some sort…)
but at any rate, I don’t really think having Disney to Anne Frank is going to be *that* bad… like alliegh25 mentioned, they *did* do “The Color of Friendship”... I have an inkling that it will be marketed toward the older Disney crowd—the preteens that are busy squealing for the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus and are old enough to handle things like the Holocaust. After all, I’m pretty sure you start learning a/b it in your 6th or 7th grade history class anyhow.
william.paul
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 04:06 pm: [report]
Wasn’t Walt Disney accused of being an anti-Semite?
I would be really nervous to see Disney get its hands on The Giver.
impoddity
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 08:15 pm: [report]
Don’t let the Mouse do it!! It kills everything it touches!!
kacers37
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 06:42 am: [report]
Do some research before you post a story. Disney already made a movie of Where the Red Fern Grows, which happened to be a remake of the movie that was made in 1974, so it’s been done twice.
nutmeghan
wrote on August 17 2009 @ 09:20 pm: [report]
i think that the diary of anne frank would make a fantastic, heart-breaking movie, but not if disney does it. whoa, boy, is that a recipe for cinematic disaster. i can’t believe anne frank’s estate is letting that happen. :/
remembercedricdiggory
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 08:00 pm: [report]
OMIGOD thank you first poster, I’d forgotten about The Color of Friendship! I’ve been leaving it off my list of favorite Disney movies!
LunaLena
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 09:39 pm: [report]
The Diary of Anne Frank was made into a movie in 1959 already, actually… when I checked IMDB to see if my memory was correct, I also found an article saying that David Mamet was hired to do the Disney remake and Disney scrapped it because he wanted to make it “too dark.”
I agree that Disney has made some pretty live-action movies, but that was before it turned into this horrible direct-to-DVD-sequel producing money monster. I really wouldn’t trust them to do a good job with this subject.
In fact, I’d expect it to be much like the Robot Chicken skit that prophesied this a couple of years ago.
LunaLena
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 09:41 pm: [report]
...that should have been “pretty good live-action movies.”