While Disney has embarked on a vast enterprise of adapting its own animated classics, with varying degrees of success, a certain weariness is being felt among fans. However, an animated classic would undoubtedly benefit from being adapted into live-action.
Disney has what it takes to get involved in the fantasy war
There would be a lot to say about the live-action adaptations of Disney studio animated classics. While four of them (Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin) have managed to exceed a billion dollars at the box office, the exercise often seems futile. The public and critics do not seem to appreciate the fact that the studio reproduces almost identically – minus the magic of animation – its own masterpieces; and to stray too far from it is to take the risk of taking a volley of green wood. But has the Disney studio not made a mistake in strategy?
Indeed, the group would gain much more from adapting animated classics that have had less success, either because its potential was wasted by a chaotic production, or because the public did not know how to appreciate it at its true measure upon its release. In a previous article, we returned to the reasons why Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire would benefit from a live-action adaptation, in particular thanks to new technologies. Today we would like to tell you all the reasons why a The Black Cauldron movie would be a great idea.
Released in 1985, The Black Cauldronis the twenty-fifth animated classic from the Disney studio. Directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich, it is an adaptation of the Chronicles of Prydain, by the American fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander. The film unfortunately encountered enormous production problems; the Disney studio was then in the process of restructuring, and did not know exactly who the film should be aimed at. Moreover, the director Tim Burton, who worked at the time for the studio with the big ears – and whose entire filmography was recently classified! – had drawn some monsters so disturbing that they were not retained for the feature film.
Moreover, while we are witnessing a real fantasy war since the conclusion of Game of Thrones – which Disney+ has tried to to participate with the outrageous series Willow, canceled and removed from the platform's catalog -, the Disney studio could have with Taram and the Magic Cauldron the project it needs to launch into the battle. In addition to correcting the many flaws of the animated classic – which is not lacking in charm – by offering, for example, more detailed characters, the live-action film could fully exploit the material that served as inspiration for Lloyd Alexander's literary saga: Brytonian Celtic mythology, and more particularly the Welsh stories recorded in the medieval collection The Four Branches of the Mabinogi.
In 2020, rumors indicated that a Taram and the Magic Cauldron film was in preparation; Four years later, we haven't heard anything about the project. In any case, we hope that a film inspired by the Chronicles of Prydain is indeed in the pipeline, and that it will live up to the stakes. Fingers crossed!