An arms race to create the next big fantasy series is well underway. With the “Harry Potter” franchise in the rearview mirror, the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise faltering, and “Game of Thrones” on its final season, a fantasy void is opening. To fill this gap, Amazon is moving forward with producing content for “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Wheel of Time,” Netflix is remaking “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and Lionsgate is producing both a television and movie series off of “The Kingkiller Chronicles.”
Never one to shy away from a fight, Disney is also entering the fray with an adaptation of the “Artemis Fowl” book series, a series more in the vein of “Harry Potter” than the other aforementioned titles but still in the fantasy genre. And, at last, fans can rejoice as a trailer just dropped.
“Artemis Fowl” has had a long journey through production hell. Fans may recall the rights to had been purchased back in 2001. With a screenplay written and a team tapped, all signs were go but the production was eventually shelved for well over a decade. Now, with the void opening, Disney is seeing it through, tapping Kenneth Branagh to direct.
For those who don’t know, “Artemis Fowl” is a series of eight young adult novel, written by Irish author Eoin Colfer, about a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind named Artemis Fowl II who discovers a fairy realm and tries to exploit it to make his family wealthy.
A book review by The New York Times notes the first book is described it as “Die Hard with fairies,” which honestly, sounds ridiculous. That aside, the series has garnered its own band of followers and Disney likely sees an opportunity to strike while the iron’s hot. Though, time will tell if fans drag their friends and families to the theaters to see it.
For his part, Branagh will direct Josh Gad as Mulch Diggums and Judi Dench as Commander Root with the remaining cast being relatively unknown. Ferdia Shaw plays the titular role and this will be his debut film.
It’s hard to imagine anything coming of this movie. The series doesn’t hold a candle to greater fantasy properties and if we learned anything from Disney’s failure to adapt “A Wrinkle in Time,” sometimes young adult book adaptations don’t translate well to the big screen. Of course, Disney has pulled rabbits out of their hat plenty of times before and Branagh could bring this to life as he did with the remake of “Cinderella” in 2015.
“Artemis Fowl” is scheduled to release on August 9, 2019. In the meantime, here’s the latest trailer:
