Live-Action ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ in the Works

By Darryn King | 04/03/2015 4:03 pm | 30 Comments

Disney is working on a live-action Winnie the Pooh, it was revealed yesterday.

Indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, whose dark literary comedy Listen Up Philip (starring Jason Schwartzman and Elisabeth Moss) was a recent critical favorite at Sundance, will write and direct, Deadline reports.

The Winnie the Pooh film will focus on an adult Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred Acre Wood, the home of Piglet, Eeyore—a role for Jason Schwartzman if ever there was one—Rabbit, Tigger and Disney’s clothed version of A.A. Milne’s Bear of Very Little Brain himself. No word yet if these characters will be brought to life in full, Andy Serkis-style motion-captured performance, or perhaps more like this:

Deadline points out that Disney also recently assigned director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) to remake Pete’s Dragon, speculating that the studio is perhaps out to establish its indie bonafides.

It has been only four years since Disney’s traditionally animated and critically well received Winnie the Pooh feature film, titled simply Winnie the Pooh, which featured songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the songwriting duo behind Frozen.

The news comes in the same week in which it was revealed Disney has bought a script by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek for a possible live-action remake of its 1998 movie Mulan.