Can’t say we’re all that surprised. With Sony teaming with Channing Tatum and Billy Ray to the tune of around $1 million, picking up their “Peter Pan Begins” project, it was only a matter of time before the competition started dipping their toes in the water of Neverland. And the fact that it’s Disney isn’t much of a shocker either.
The Wrap reports that Disney chief Bob Iger recently revealed during a shareholders meeting that the studio was considering adapting the best-selling children’s book “Peter and the Starcatchers” by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. The story takes place before the events in “Peter Pan” and follows Peter and Molly running around merry old England searching for treasure while battling pirates. The story feature characters mostly not found in J.M. Barrie‘s tales and it has huge franchise potential: there are already three sequel-prequel books on shelves.
And Disney isn’t messing around with this either. They’ve already been trying the material on stage in New York City in a couple of off Broadway theaters and it’s been getting strong reviews thus far. However, Iger hasn’t seen the stage show yet and stresses that no decision has been made just yet. Disney already has one swashbuckling franchise already — “Pirates Of The Caribbean” — and they may be waiting until that series draws near an end before slotting this in. It could certainly be a like-minded replacement.
