Disney Developing a Live-Action Winnie the Pooh

Disney continues to pillage their animation back-catalogue for the live-action remake treatment, as Deadline reveals that the studio is in development on a new Winnie the Pooh feature film that will spin a new yarn about an adult Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred Acre Woods. 

To pen this reimagined take on A.A. Milne’s famous children’s book series, Disney has hired Alex Ross Perry, the 30-year-old indie filmmaker whose Sundance-favorite Listen Up Philip garnered rave reviews last year. Perry is currently in post-production on his next directorial feature, Queen of Earth.

The soft-spoken yellow teddy bear’s history at the company dates back to the first theatrical short film Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, which was supervised by Walt Disney himself in 1966. Two more shorts followed and eventually all three were released to theaters as 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. An additional pair of theatrical shorts in the ’80s were later joined by several TV series, eight direct-to-DVD movies, and four more traditionally-animated theatrical features, the last of which was the 2011 box office failure Winnie the Pooh.

Disney has had quite a lot of success lately with live-action versions of some of its animated classics. Currently in theaters, Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella has already grossed more than $335 million worldwide. It was recently preceded by Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (a quasi-sequel to the 1951 animated feature) and Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent (a retelling of 1959’s Sleeping Beauty). On the way soon are also Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book (arriving April 15, 2016), Beauty and the Beast (March 17, 2017) and, currently without a release date, Tim Burton’s Dumbo as well as Mulan. There’s also an Alice in Wonderland sequel, Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, that is being directed by The Muppets‘ James Bobin and is set to arrive May 27, 2016.