On March 11, Red Riding Hood opens, and Beastly is in theaters now. The Vancouver Post reports that there are currently three Snow White films in the works (one with Julia Roberts as the wicked queen), along with Hansel and Gretel, Jack the Giant Killer, as well as a “fantasy copy show” Grimm, in which fairy-tale characters turn real.
The reporter links the resurgence of interest in fairy tales to the success of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland film and to fact that producers do not have to pay for the rights to these stories. I wonder if that’s all there is to it. I think we may be giving these stories more air-time, letting them breathe as Arthur W. Frank puts it, in part because we need their power surges now more than ever. The mythical always stages a comeback in times of high anxiety about technology and the atrophy of our affective life.
There are actually two different fairy tale television series in development, the one for NBC from some Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers and one for ABC from the Lost writers which actually sounds slightly more interesting its descriptions.
Fairy tales everywhere… it is really, really fascinating right now…
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