It looks like Bambi will be the next Disney animated film to get a remake Released in 1942, Bambi was adapted from Felix Salten’s 1923 book, Bambi, a Life in the Woods, telling the story of a young mule deer named Bambi who will one day become the Great Prince of the Forest, like his father before him. While it was initially a box office disappointment that drew mixed reviews, the movie is now considered one of the studio’s all-time great animated features. It’s also infamous for traumatizing generations with the scene where Bambi’s mother is shot and killed by a human hunter.
Disney, of course, has made a bundle off the live-action remakes of its animated films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin over the last decade, and has plans to continue releasing re-imaginings of its animated features for the foreseeable future. Up next is Mulan, a live-action retelling of the Mouse House’s 1998 animated movie based on the ancient Chinese legend that’s scheduled to open in March. We can now officially add Bambi to the list of developing projects coming down the pipeline after that.
THR is reporting Disney has hired Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Lindsey Beer to write a live-action remake of its animated Bambi film, with Chris and Paul Weitz and Andrew Miano’s production banner Depth of Field (The Farewell) producing. Robertson-Dworet’s previous credits include the 2018 Tomb Raider reboot and Captain Marvel (both of which she co-wrote), while Beer wrote Netflix’s teen rom-com Sierra Burgess is a Loser and co-wrote the delayed Chaos Walking adaptation starring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley.
As you might expect, THR says the Bambi remake will be largely photorealistic CGI, just like Disney’s The Jungle Book and The Lion King re-imaginings. In all likelihood, it will hew closer to the latter and essentially be a computer-animated film featuring immersive environments that feel like they could be real, considering the sole human in the story (the hunter or “Man”) is barely a character at all. That also means Bambi and his friends (like Thumper the rabbit and Flower the skunk) will be purely CGI in the same way the animals in The Lion King were. This will surely come as frustrating news to those who disliked how un-expressive the critters in that film were, as opposed to the house pets in Disney+‘s Lady and the Tramp remake (which combined CGI with actual dogs). Hopefully, the Mouse House will heed those critiques and take steps to make the photo-real Bambi a bit more emotive.
Like most of Disney’s re-imaginings, the Bambi remake probably won’t stray too far from the animated film’s story, beyond padding things out to make it a proper feature-length (the 1942 movie is only 70 minutes long). It might even feature fewer “fixes” to the original movie than other Disney remakes have made to their predecessors, seeing as the animated Bambi and its environmentally-friendly message hold up better than other Mouse House fairy tales from the ’40s (like Dumbo). Whether people are eager to be re-traumatized and watch a grittier version of Bambi’s coming of age, that’s another matter entirely.
Source: THR
