With a whole load of Disney’s classic animated feature films having been made into live action films – the latest being The Little Mermaid whose trailer has just been released the studio have announced that the 1970 feature The Aristocats to be a live action film.
Helming the film is Ahmir Thompson in what will be his narrative feature debut having earned an Oscar for his work on the doc feature Summer of Soul, that was distributed by Disney’s Hulu. He is also the drummer and frontman for the hip-hop band The Roots, which serves as the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon so with that background he would seem the ideal, hiring for the jazz themed film that had great songs that included, ‘Everybody wants to be a cat’. Thompson therefore will also oversee the music for the film too.
The story follows a cat and her three kittens, who inherit the fortune of their heiress owner, only to have a jealous butler dump the cats out in the countryside. The cats have to find their way back home to Paris with the help of a musically-inclined alley cat. The original voice cast included Eva Gabor and Phil Harris, with music by Robert and Richard Sherman, whose legendary work for the studio included Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
The live action film will have a script by Will Gluck (who helmed the live action Peter Rabbit films) and Keith Bunin (who wrote the wildly different films Onward for Pixar and the horror film, ‘Horns’)
Before the films goes into production we will first see the The Little Mermaid and after that there’s Snow White also lined, Whether these films will top the live action The Lion King which earned $1.6b at the box office remains to be seen.
Related trailer : The Little Mermaid
Related Interview: A surprise visit from Jake Gyllenhaal at the Strange World premiere
