Disney Wants To Make A Movie Out Of One Of The Fairytales They Have Never Touched
Disney is developing a 1001 Night project, based on the collection of Middle Eastern folktales.
This article is more than 2 years old
Walt Disney Pictures is developing an ambitious new picture out of One Thousand and One Nights, the ancient and influential collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. According to a report in Deadline, Disney is working on a movie tentatively titled 1001 Nights, which will use the various stories in the collection to inspire a live-action fantasy/science fiction hybrid genre film. For this ambitious project, Disney has hired the Welsh-Iranian writer Arash Amel to both write the screenplay and executive produce 1001 Nights.
Disney is well known for utilizing folk tales to inspire some of its most famous and acclaimed work; most likely, the name recognition inherently built into fairytales and their convenient public domain status makes them very appealing on a cost basis. The very first Disney animated film, 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was based on the 19th-century Brothers Grimm story, and is currently being remade as a live-action film starring Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler, which says something about fairytale longevity. It will have to remain to be seen whether the Disney 1001 Nights will last the test of time in the same way.
The Deadline report also notes that Disney’s plan for 1001 Nights will not include any stories that the company has previously adapted, like “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” Still, there is much in the original text for Disney to adapt for 1001 Nights, such as numerous tales of Sinbad the Sailor (mostly recently adapted by DreamWorks for a Brad Pitt vehicle) and “The Fisherman and the Jinni.” It sounds like Disney has some pretty lofty hopes for 1001 Nights, so we will just have to see what they make of it.
The original One Thousand and One Nights (sometimes known as Arabian Nights) is a collection of folktales with a complicated and uncertain origin. It definitely came together over the course of centuries, likely beginning in the eighth century, and slowly transformed into a canonical set of established folktales. Many of the stories themselves are undoubtedly even older, stretching back millennia to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia.
As is the way of the world, that means that Disney will be the most recent inheritor of the stories and is free to transform them into 1001 Nights. In recent years, Disney has had enormous commercial success in turning their past successes like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Pinocchio into live-action remakes. However, Disney has also been criticized for the perceived lack of new ideas, so perhaps 1001 Nights is a step towards some (sort of) new material.
Most likely, Disney will be working on 1001 Nights for some years, especially considering the many different Marvel and Star Wars projects the company has going on in addition to its mainline films. Hopefully, the company will actually figure out a new and original take for this ancient collection of stories, and hopefully, it will figure out how to make it.
