It’s Disney’s way of extracting more money from moviegoers without the effort of coming up with new ideas, obviously.
Re Porgy and Bess etc. - there was evidently a bit of an uproar in response to a recent revival of The Wiz - claiming the producers etc. were racist for having an all-black cast. The stupid, it burns!!
Getting back to Dinklage for a minute, when I read his rant in the other thread, he came across exactly as he does in the movie Elf. That’s all I have to add.
I wonder (yes, it must have been done) if there was ever a porno with a woman and seven male little people.
There are two absolute rules in the Universe. The speed of light and Rule 34.
Well, I’m not searching for it.
(opens incognito window…screams)
I want the other kind of mermaid, with the fish part on top and the lady part on the bottom.
Jeez, warn us before you do that. Now I gotta wipe up a bunch of snot-coffee.
One can hardly blame them; this approach basically prints money. It would be irresponsible, from a fiduciary standpoint, to NOT pump out more live action remakes, reimaginings, Marvel and Star Wars content, etc. when every time they do it they make a $200 million profit. It’s risk free money.
They will figure out some way to assuage the public’s feelings around the sense that the “Seven Dwarfs” bit is insensitive. Hell, we don’t actually know for sure if that will be the title. They haven’t even started production yet; Dinklage is basically reacting to a vague story in the trades.
This, and your whole OP, is performative outrage. Get the fuck outta here with that weak shit.
Disney is making the same mistake today as it did in the 70s.
These animation-to live films are today’s Herbie The Love Bug.
Well certainly. But aren’t there Americans who could bring their talents to bear and not have to appropriate the accent and culture of another country while doing so?
Mostly, I used to be surprised when I’d catch a talk show and find out just how many of the current crop of TV and movie stars are British or Australian. Now I’m almost surprised when they don’t.
Only tangentially related to the OP: I never thought movie dwarves (like Snow White and LOTR) were humans with dwarfism. I always thought they were a different species like the elves are not human?
Usually, the objection here is that by giving a minority role to someone who isn’t part of the minority takes the job away from an actor who is part of the minority. And while, of course, giving a role to any actor takes away that role from every other actor, when it happens regularly to people who are part of a visible minority, it effectively segregates that minority out of the industry. If a deaf person wants to work as an actor, they’re going to have problems getting cast for roles for non-deaf characters, and that aren’t a lot of deaf characters being written. If the few deaf characters that do get written go to actors who aren’t deaf, then you’re effectively blocking deaf people from being actors entirely.
That’s not really a problem for “good looking Americans.” If a good looking American loses out on a role to a British actor, there are still thousands and thousands of other roles for good looking Americans.
It also has to do with representation. If you are in a marginalized group, and you never see anyone like you in the arts, it’s a problem. Case in point: Black Panther. To me, it was a good movie, solidly in the Marvel universe. To POC, it was the first time to see not only a main character super hero, but the main cast was black. It was a powerful movie to them on a whole different level.
In LotR that is absolutely true. Completely different species with a long lifespan, originally created from stone, etc. They were inspired by the dwarves of Norse mythology. Interestingly, most scholars consider them synonymous with the “black elves” in Norse mythology, while Tolkien had light and dark elves in Middle Earth as separate from dwarves.
I’m not as certain about Snow White, but the original folk tale was German I believe (Grimm’s Fairy Tales) and dwarves in Germanic folklore aren’t human either.
From boxofficemojo.com, worldwide gross:
Maleficent(2014) - $758 million
Cinderella(2015) - $542 million
Beauty & The Beast (2017) - $1.2 billion
Maleficent:Mistress of Evil (2019) - $491 million
Lion King (2019) - $1.6 billion
Aladdin (2019) - $1.05 billion
Mulan (2020) - $66 million, but not released in theaters in most of the world
Cruella (2021) - $283 million
I wish I made “mistakes” like that.
And I have no idea why you’re referring to Herbie the Love Bug. My 10 year old self thought that movie was awesome.
I really do think that the reason the motion picture versions of Porgy and Bess aren’t available, and that the reason nobody’s making a new one, is to avoid any sensitive discussions about this work. Even without insisting on an all-white cast, this is a potential minefield.
They did a Night Gallery episode with that – Lindemann’s Catch, first aired January 12, 1972. I thought it was pretty stupid, although probably well-written.
I saw that.
Asking the question here certainly created a minefield.