We can’t be too surprised by the news, after all, we’re talking about a studio notorious for their misappropriation of popular fairy tales and literature. Most of the time we are left enamored and entranced by the thick veil of pixie dust that permeates the surface of a Disney production, but Tim Burton’s 2010 interpretation of Alice let the curtain slip, leaving many of us disgusted with both Disney and Burton.
If movies like Twilight have taught us anything, it’s that substance and art are no longer necessities, but luxury. The last Alice film broke the ever so elusive billion dollar mark, and when a film makes that much money, a sequel becomes requisite. Hollywood likes to treat its franchises like race horses, pushing their prized animals to the brink of exhaustion and then further still. Eventually the animal’s body buckles from stress and malnutrition and collapses in on itself. Afterwards, the horse is then promptly executed and subsequently replaced.
In this case, the metaphor could be for Disney’s butchering of Lewis Carroll’s beloved classic, but it also could apply to screenwriter Linda Woolverton who has been enlisted once again to scribe Disney’s next outing in Wonderland. Woolverton has been a Disney mainstay since penning Beauty and the Beast in 1991, but her work on the last Alice film gives me the impression that she may soon be joining the long list of former Disney veterans in the slaughterhouse.
Of course there is always the chance, however miniscule, that Disney will miraculously knock it out of the park on this one, but given the quality of the last Alice film, and their knack for disappointing sequels, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Variety got sourced.