“Sword In The Stone” Disney+ Original Film On Hold
With Disney having so much success with live-action reimagined versions of its animated classic films like “Beauty And The Beast”, “Aladdin” and “The Lion King”, it’s been hardly surprising that Disney didn’t take long to hit the gas pedal and start plans to adapt many of its classic animated films into live-action films.
However, while there have been lots of big hits, there have also been some missteps along the way, with “Dumbo” and “Pinocchio”, Plus the latest major release, “The Little Mermaid”, didn’t reach Disney’s expectations of being a billion dollar box office draw.
Disney has had many different projects in development, including a film based on “Sword In The Stone.” This film is a take on the classic King Arthur story, in which Merlin uses all his magical powers to transform a young boy into a legendary hero.
The project was first revealed back in 2015, and in 2018, it was announced that Juan Carlos Fresnadillo had joined the project to direct the film for Disney+. The original movie was going to be written by Bryan Cogman, who has previously worked on “Game Of Thrones”, and the film was being produced by Brigham Taylor, who previously worked on “The Jungle Book”. However, all these years later, the film hasn’t been released.
During an interview with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who was promoting his new Netflix film, “Damsel”, he confirmed that the project is not moving forward.
I was attached a long time ago, and I prepped a lot for Disney for that movie. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the studio decided to hold the project. So right now it’s in a holding situation, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, to be honest. But I think it’s a great story. I would be so keen to make it if they decided to greenlight the project.
But as you can imagine, this industry is always dealing with many projects, and you don’t know exactly which are the ones that are going to make it. So, yeah, The Sword in the Stone, I really hope that that happens because I think there is a big fanbase waiting for that.
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen Disney make some major moves to try to course-correct its creative side for creating new movies, including replacing the head of Walt Disney Live Action, Sean Bailey, who’s been in charge of the division for fifteen years.
Disney CEO Bob Iger also participated in a question-and-answer session at the Morgan Stanley Conference earlier this week, where he revealed that they’ve been quietly killing some projects that they felt weren’t good enough.
With Disney going to the well so many times over the past decade, often releasing multiple live-action adaptations a year, it has worn out Disney fans with too many and is having to course correct. So it shouldn’t come to a surprise to hear that Disney has put the project on hold, especially as it starts pulling back on creating original films for Disney+, instead focusing on theatrical releases.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the film might never get made, as Disney often stops development on projects and can come back years later. Disney actually started working on an adaptation of the classic Hans Christian Andersen story of “The Snow Queen” in 1937 before eventually getting a project called “Frozen” out in 2013.
But with the negative feedback from fans who have become bored with Disney churning out live-action remakes of its animated films every few months, putting this film on hold is probably the right thing to do, especially since the King Arthur story has been told so many times.
While we aren’t going to see a live-action version of “Sword In The Stone” anytime soon, in the meantime, you can catch the animated version on Disney+ now.
Do you think Disney is right to not make a live-action remake of “Sword In The Stone”? Let us know on social media!
