[THIS POST HAS BEEN REVISED TO CORRECT AN ERROR.
Bedrock Pictures is not necessarily making all three of the films in question.
But the screenwriter, Jeff Stockwell, is attached to all three projects.]
Bedrock Pictures plans to make a movie of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, from a script by Jeff Stockwell.
And my, my… Stockwell’s a busy guy.
He’s also working on adaptations of Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.
This news has tied my guts into knots. I feel competing urges to pray and to go to a pub for something strong.
If Bedrock didn’t have such direct ties to Walden, the company that has made a mess of Narnia and other great children’s books, I wouldn’t be so worried about the outcome of A Wrinkle in Time.
But I love all three of these stories. Whatever studio makes them, I hope they know what they’re doing. If these stories must be made into movies (or in the case of Kiki, into another movie), I’d like them to be in the hands of patient, thoughtful artists, not hasty crowdpleasers who fail to understand why these stories shine.
All of this just makes me increasingly grateful for the folks at Pixar, and for folks like Spike Jonze (Where the Wild Things Are) and Henry Selick (Coraline). And Miyazaki, of course. Artists who make movies that will last. Movies that are truly mysterious. Movies that make me want to go back to discover more rewards in them over and over again.
The Narnia films should have been movies like those. And the stories that Stockwell is adapting for the big screen deserve to be glorious movies as well.
I’ll try to be hopeful. But it isn’t going to be easy.