Following Disney chief Bob Iger’s very recent admission that the company had quietly canceled several projects that they didn’t wholeheartedly believe in the last few months amid belt-tightening and scaling back, a picture of what some of those projects might be is starting to emerge.
In an in-depth piece from The Wrap about soon-to-be-former Disney executive Sean Bailey and his legacy— exiting after 15 years as the motion picture group’s president of production, a big shake-up in the company— some details of what may have already been put out to pasture are becoming more apparent.
According to the Wrap, Sarah Polley is apparently no longer directing a new version of “Bambi,” one of the projects nixed under the company’s closer examination of what was in the development queue. The publication says it’s unclear if the project will move forward now that Bailey is gone, as he was one of its champions, but Disney does love its live-action remakes of animated classics, so don’t totally write it off.
For Polley, however, she always seemed like an odd fit for a Disney project of this type anyhow. These live-action animation remakes are generally crowd-pleasers, and she’s almost exclusively a thoughtful artist. It wouldn’t surprise if her take was too left-of-center for Disney, especially in this new, more conservative climate.
Meanwhile, and probably not coincidentally timed, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo told ScreenRant this week that his live-action adaptation of “The Sword and The Stone” has been on hold, too. “I think it’s a great project and a great story that needs to be told, but I don’t know what is gonna happen,” he said.
While not at all confirmed as scuttled projects, The Wrap does speculate about some projects put into development under Bailey that could be put under scrutiny and possibly could be among the projects Disney has quietly cast aside or is reevaluating. Some of those that remain question marks include a “Cruella” sequel with Emma Stone set to return (which sounds like the most viable of them all), a live-action “Hercules” from Guy Ritchie (don’t be surprised if it’s dead considering all the projects Ritchie recently signed up for), and a version of “The Aristocats” directed by musician-turned-filmmaker Questlove.
Speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley in San Francisco earlier this week, Iger said, “It’s not an easy thing” to cancel projects, “but you got to make those tough calls. We’ve actually made those tough calls. We’ve not been that public about it, but we’ve killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough.”
As The Wrap notes, David Greenbaum, a former co-head of Searchlight Pictures, who helped lead many of their films to Oscar glory—movies like “The Shape of Water,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Slumdog Millionaire”— will replace Bailey under a mandate from Iger to make fewer, better movies. This definitely jibes with Iger’s less-is-more, quality-over-quantity ethos laid out in the last year or more. The Disney chief has already said Lucasfilm and Marvel will be scaling back, and the era of the streaming content glut seems to be very much over. Don’t be surprised when we eventually learn more specifics about what other film projects Disney has quietly canceled in the next few weeks and months.