Fresh off her Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar win for Women Talking, Sarah Polley is in talks to undertake the biggest project of her career thus far. The writer-director and former actor is reportedly in discussions about directing a live-action Bambi movie for Disney.
The project is only in the earliest of development stages right now, but sources tell Deadline that the project is a musical that will feature music from Grammy-winning country star Kacey Musgraves. Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster (Transparent) have written the most recent draft of the script.
Disney initially signaled its intention to make a live-action Bambi back in early 2020, bringing in Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Lindsey Beer as writers and Depth of Field to produce in January of that year. But things have stalled since then, and they may remain up in the air given the current unpredictable strike conditions.
The story of Bambi is well known – he’s a young deer struck by tragedy who has a number of woodland pals such as a rabbit named Thumper and Flower the skunk. An adaptation of Felix Salten‘s 1923 novel, the original film was released in 1942 as just the fifth animated feature ever to emerge from Disney.
It went on to gross over $267M worldwide, landed multiple Academy Award nominations, and has endured as a classic over the years, with its famous depiction of the death of Bambi’s mother still upsetting children to this day.
The live-action Bambi will be just the latest live-action remake from Disney. The most recent edition, Rob Marshall‘s The Little Mermaid, has predictably done gangbusters at the box office, reeling in over $414 million since hitting cinemas in late May.
If Polley does sign on, hopefully her empathetic tendencies – as seen in her other work Stories We Tell, Take This Waltz, and Away From Her – will still shine through in a big studio project like this.
#Peace.Love.Bambi
