While Ariel the Mermaid is currently swimming through cinema screens, another Disney animated film is to get a live-action remake. And could bring up an old trauma in the process.
The remake of Ariel the Mermaid is currently playing in cinemas. Disney, meanwhile, is already working on the next live-action remakes of well-known animated classics. One of them, Bambi, has now cleared the next big hurdle to touch and disturb new generations of children even more realistically in the future.
Disney is remaking Bambi as a live-action film – with one of the most sought-after directors
The first reports about a planned Bambi remake by Disney reached us back in 2020. Now, according to Deadline, something is happening again with the project: Sarah Polley, one of the most exciting directors currently in talks for the remake. The actress (My Life Without Me) and filmmaker (Take This Waltz) won an Oscar just this year for her adapted screenplay for The Debate. Now she could soon breathe dramatic new life into Bambi – and this time it’s even set to be a musical.
Bambi
In the original film Bambi, a young fawn sees the light of day and gets to know the forest and its inhabitants. But as it grows older, it must also learn about the dangers of a life in nature and when hunters come to the forest, Bambi loses its mother. What is considered by many to be one of the saddest scenes in Disney’s animated history.
Will the Bambi remake repeat the trauma of the mother’s death?
The death of Bambi’s mother is likely to cause many tears again in the Disney remake, before the fawn subsequently grows up and follows in the footsteps of his deer father. Only this time the deer will be animated in a photo-realistic way. The question this raises is: will the realism approach make this scene harder or, on the contrary, less emotional?
For ever since Disney has been making live-action remakes, animal characters have had to forfeit much of their emotional animated facial expressions in favour of realism – something that was most recently chalked up to little “soulless” Simba in The Lion King remake when his father died. But the Arielle remake managed to create charming live-action versions of 2 out of 3 animals.
There is no concrete start date for the Bambi remake yet. Since the project is still in its early stages, the earliest it can be expected is 2026. The next Disney real film remake, which will be released on 21 March 2024, will be Snow White.
