PC Watership Down

[Gob]

It was the film that traumatised a generation of children, with its much-loved rabbit characters slain on screen in graphic and memorable scenes.

But the story of Watership Down is to be remade for a new era, as programme-makers promise to tone down its most brutal images.

The BBC has teamed up with Netflix for one of the most expensive mini-series ever made for the small screen, and the first animated four-part drama of its kind.

The new version stars the voices of James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult as Hazel and Fiver, Sir Ben Kingsley as General Woundwort and Star Wars star John Boyega as Bigwig.

The show’s executive producer told the Telegraph the 2017 version will not just tone down the levels of on-screen violence to make it more appropriate for children, but give a boost to its female characters.

Female rabbits including Clover, played by Gemma Arterton, Strawberry, played by Olivia Colman, and Hyzenthlay, played by Anne-Marie Duff, will get a dose of doe power, as it were, to allow them to display their own heroics alongside their male co-stars.

Watership Down, which will use computer animation to bring make the rabbits more life-like than ever, is made possible by a huge injection of cash from Netflix, which will broadcast the show worldwide after it is premiered on the BBC.

Programme-makers have not confirmed their budget, but sources have indicated it is similar to that of The Night Manager, which cost £3m per hour and a total of around £18m.

It is the first blockbuster drama made as a co-production between the BBC and Netflix, often pitched as rivals, and follows the smaller-scale River in 2015.

Based on the 1972 Richard Adams novel, Watership Down tells of the story of rabbits undertaking a perilous journey to find a safe home, and follows a 1978 animated film which has gone down in history for its shocking scenes of animal deaths.

It was originally given a U certification, with the British Board of Film Classification recently admitting it had received complaint "almost every year since its classification".

Rory Aitken, executive producer at company 42, said programme-makers hoped to bring the story to a new audience who would not be “scarred” by it, restoring the reputation of the novel as an adventure story.

“The thing about Watership Down is that it’s an epic adventure story,” he said.

“It’s not a terrifying, brutal story. I think that in a way we want to restore the reputation that the book should have as one of the great adventure stories of all time.

“It’s grown this reputation for being scarring and horrific and brutal, and actually that’s not what the essence of the story is

“While we won’t shy away from the darkness in the book, visually it won’t be as brutal and scarring.

“The idea is to bring it to a wider family audience. While Watership Down is never going to be for young children, it will be for the whole family to watch together.”

He added the story would be further updated by making “female characters more prominent and heroic than ever before”, with the four hours of television allowing them to include more of the book’s detail.

“The movie was iconic, and played a large part in our childhoods,” he said. “The world of television is changing so much that it’s only really in the last year or two that it’s become possible to do something like this properly.

“It was a 400 page book distilled heavily into the 90-minute film, and suddenly we had the potential to make this on a much broader canvas over four hours of television.

“It’s a great opportunity, and the generation who grew up with Watership Down are now able to bring it to the younger generation.”

Matthew Read, BBC drama commissioning editor, said: "It is fantastic to have the opportunity to bring a modern classic to a mainstream BBC One audience with such an incredible roster of actors alongside the talented team overseeing the animation.

"This fantastic take on the novel will unite the whole family, and bring this classic story to a new generation.”

[Gob]

I wonder what they would do to some classic Roald Dahl?

One farmer is enormously fat, another is boozy and the third is a pot-bellied dwarf. Then there is the grandmother described as 'an old hag' and likened to a witch. This vitriol is not spouted by internet trolls or sparring bogans, but is used by Roald Dahl to describe characters in two of his most popular books, Fantastic Mr Fox and George's Marvelous Medicine.

Dahl pulls no punches in describing his characters' physical and mental shortcomings, regardless of the age or sensitivities of his young readers. And if the sales of the books, which have reached more than 200 million worldwide is anything to judge by, that it is exactly what they want.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/fleur- ... oald-dahl/

[MajGenl.Meade]

BBC - silflay hraka

[Lord Jim]

It was the film that traumatised a generation of children, with its much-loved rabbit characters slain on screen in graphic and memorable scenes.

I remember going to see Watership Down when I was in high school. It's not something I would ever take a small child to see.

Note to clueless and/or lazy parents:

Just because a movie is animated doesn't mean it's appropriate to take your tiny tykes to. Do your homework first. (I wonder how many idiots took their kids to see Fritz The Cat thinking it must be a kiddie movie...)

[Bicycle Bill]

It was the film that traumatised a generation of children, with its much-loved rabbit characters slain on screen in graphic and memorable scenes.

I remember going to see Watership Down when I was in high school. It's not something I would ever take a small child to see.

Note to clueless and/or lazy parents:

Just because a movie is animated doesn't mean it's appropriate to take your tiny tykes to. Do your homework first. (I wonder how many idiots took their kids to see Fritz The Cat thinking it must be a kiddie movie...)

In light of the success of the Harry Potter movies, I'm surprised someone didn't re-release Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards" to try to rope in the suckers.

-"BB"-