Hollywood Plans to Flood Market with Peter Pan Films

Hollywood Plans to Flood Market with Peter Pan Films

Movie News

By our guest blogger, Nick Hanover

Apparently tired of ushering in the apocalypse with endless boardgame adaptations, Hollywood's big studios have now set their sights on Peter Pan. According to the Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision there are no less than five projects in the works based around J.M. Barrie's classic story, including three (!) projects that are all basically named Neverland.

First up is the stupidly titled The.Never.Land, which despite being merely a spec script has attracted oodles of studio attention simply because it promises to make Peter Pan "more like Twilight" because, hey, let's be honest here--pretty much every classic story needs pouty teenagers and sparkly skin. Arriving at studio pitch meetings at basically the same time was an untitled project from the Wedding Crashers production team Tapestry. That project has as its hook the vague notion of "family adventure," which I'm guessing just means Hook with Will Ferrel and Ben Stiller instead of Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman. Yay?

Just in case you thought the bar couldn't be set any lower, though, Channing Tatum will be starring in the generically titled Pan. What's so special about Pan, you ask? I assume you mean outside of Tatum's total lack of charisma and weird way of dealing with unwanted hair? Ah, that'd be the idea that Hook and Pan are brothers. Slightly more interesting, at least in the reimagining department, is Neverland, also a spec script, but this time around a spec script that says "F*ck you Twilight!" and rips off Wicked instead with its twist of Hook being the hero while Pan is recast as some psychopath going around kidnapping the children of London. I'm guessing they're going to play it safe and not have that be the Gary Glitter style of daycare but you never know.

Because this isn't all confusing enough already, SyFy has also got a Neverland coming out, featuring Kiera Knightley playing Tinkerbell in some kind of prequel, hopefully with Tick Tock replaced by Supergator or Gatoroid or something. That, my friends, is the type of adventurous filmmaking I think we all want to see.