With movies like Cruella, Prince Charming, Tink, and Genies all currently in production, it looks like the live-action, reimagined fairy tales are going to be coming at us fast and steady for the next couple of years. The latest addition to that list is Come Away — a prequel to Alice and Wonderland and Peter Pan. What’s that you say? Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan aren’t connected in any way? Ah-ha, my friends, that’s where you’re wrong. Come Away makes the audacious claim that Alice and Peter are siblings.
Deadline reports that this new fairy tale, prequel mash-up is in the works. The Academy Award-winning director of Pixar’s Brave, Brenda Chapman, will be making her live-action debut behind the camera and Marissa Kate Goodhill has written the script.
But back to all that Alice and Peter sibling stuff. What’s up with that? Well, here’s Come Away’s premise:
Before Alice went to Wonderland, and before Peter became Pan, they were brother and sister. When their eldest brother dies in a tragic accident, they each seek to save their parents from their downward spirals of despair until finally they are forced to choose between home and imagination, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland.
Anyone who watches ABC’s Once Upon a Time is no stranger to this sort of strange, fairy tale, genealogical entwinement. On that show — SPOILER ALERT — Rumplestiltskin’s dad is Peter Pan and he shares a grandson with Snow White. So, there’s a precedent for this. The idea is interesting and Chapman certainly has the chops to pull this off. But maybe Hollywood could consider adapting a non-western fairy tale before we get some movie about how the Mad Hatter and Captain Hook were college roommates.
[Deadline]
