Dastardly fox rejected by Disney to be revived on film
A CONNIVING fox deemed too dark for Disney owing to his thieving, murderous ways is to be reintroduced to a new generation of children through bedtime stories and on the big screen in a project from the University of Oxford.
Reynard the Fox, a medieval children’s story that fell out of fashion for its cynical, shocking storylines, is to be welcomed back into mainstream culture in a modern retelling that will not shy away from its disturbing elements.
A project, based on archive material from the Bodleian Libraries and Bristol University, will include the publication of an illustrated children’s book, and four films made by Aardman, the studio behind Wallace and Gromit, to be screened at a festival in 2020. Children with special educational needs will work with Aardman and charity Flash of Splendour Arts to animate the films.
The story of Reynard was explored but ultimately rejected by Disney in 1937, when it was looking for an animated film to make after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Notes from production meetings, in the Walt Disney archives, detail qualms about how to present a hero who was anti-establishment, amoral, and with no redeeming backstory, with the studio’s eponymous founder asking: “I see some swell possibilities in Reynard, but is it smart to make it?”
The idea eventually mutated into the fox hero of Disney’s Robin Hood.
Anne Louise Avery, director of Flash of Splendour Arts and author of the forthcoming illustrated edition of Reynard Tales, said the updated version would “convey the darkness and the horror” of the originals for children aged seven to 12.
“It’s quite violent and it’s quite shocking even today,” she said. “We’re not going to put it in an unsuitable way but we won’t flinch from trying to present the real Reynard.”
She added the success of Philip Pullman and JK Rowling had shown that children want to “read about darkness … and the strange scary adult world”.