Between “Peter Pan and Wendy” now out on Disney+ and “The Little Mermaid” about to hit cinemas, the Mouse House is showing no signs of slowing down its plans for live-action remakes of its animated classics.
On the way are remakes of “Snow White,” “Moana,” “Lilo & Stitch,” “Hercules,” “Bambi,” “The Aristocats,” a prequel to “The Lion King,” a sequel to “Cruella” and a spin-off of “Aladdin”.
Other projects that were also on the list, however, appear to have stalled. The “Beauty and the Beast” prequel series about Gaston & LeFou seems to have gone by the wayside.
Now it appears the same has happened for the remake of 1996’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” animated feature based on the Victor Hugo novel. Famed playwright and scribe David Henry Hwang was originally penning an adaptation.
However, this week, Disney composer Alan Menken says the project may never happen. He tells Comicbook.com that progress has halted on Hunchback and that he isn’t certain the film will ever happen due to the subject matter and real-world issues the film deals with:
“I have no idea. It’s a tough one because the Hunchback movie, Hunchback story involves a lot of real, real issues that are important issues and should be explored to be discussed. And there has to be an agreement about how we deal with those issues.
You know, do we do a Hunchback without ‘Hellfire?’ I don’t think so… So it sits in this limbo right now, but the Hercules movie is apparently underway, and I got some inklings of what’s going on, but just some.”
Previously Josh Gad was reportedly in talks to play the film’s lead, Quasimodo. The comments from Menken aren’t far from some previous comments he made four years ago to The Indian Express saying a live-action “Pocahontas” movie would probably never happen in today’s world:
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do ‘Pocahontas’, I think that story is going to be difficult. With modern sensibilities, it’d be hard you’re going to offend somebody, so I don’t know.”
The comments come as Disney’s live-action adaptations have been receiving some rough criticism. Robert Zemeckis’ live-action “Pinocchio” was widely panned by critics and audiences (29%/28% on Rotten Tomatoes), whilst “Peter Pan and Wendy” scored mixed critics reviews (62%) and an abysmal audience score (12%).
