DVDizzy Forum

UmbrellaFish wrote:Maybe if Mulan was added to my Movies Anywhere account after the D+ Premiere exclusive period ran out.... but that’s not going to be the case, though, correct?

Q: For people who grew up with this Disney animated version, the songs were integral to the film. When you made the decision not to include any, was Disney on board?

Niki Caro: It was always implicit [that there would be no songs]. In the epic vision of this movie, it was implicit that it wasn't going to be a Gilbert and Sullivan situation.

Q: You mentioned that in real life, we don't really break out into song do we?

Niki Caro: We don't!

Sotiris wrote:Is it me or does the director seem to look down on musical theater? Her response rubbed me the wrong way.

Q: For people who grew up with this Disney animated version, the songs were integral to the film. When you made the decision not to include any, was Disney on board?

Niki Caro: It was always implicit [that there would be no songs]. In the epic vision of this movie, it was implicit that it wasn't going to be a Gilbert and Sullivan situation.

Q: You mentioned that in real life, we don't really break out into song do we?

Niki Caro: We don't!

Source: https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a3295 ... niki-caro/

Q: How do the live-action feature adaptations of Disney’s animated films get off the ground, and in particular Mulan? Does everything start with Disney President of Production Sean Bailey?

Jason Reed: I think there are a lot of different ways these come together, I don’t think there’s a pattern for it, necessarily. I know that when we started, I was an executive at Disney when we did Alice and Wonderland, and that was because (screenwriter) Linda Woolverton had a fresh, new take on the story. There wasn’t a pattern of doing those movies yet, so it was based solely on someone coming in with a new creative approach that got us excited about re-examining a piece of entertainment. With Mulan the executive team read a spec script that had some new elements that refreshed the story and explored her journey a little more deeply than the animated movie had the ability to do. I think the executives, Sean, and the executives at Disney saw an opportunity to dig into this story in a new way and thought that it fit with that moment.

Q: The original 1998 film came out of Disney’s 1990s animated musical renaissance, but what was the decision behind not making the live-action feature, a musical?

Jason Reed: Part of our thinking is that we thought that this material would be a great opportunity to do something new for the Disney label, to take this and convert it from a musical comedy, which the animated film was, which is great. We still love it, and it’s one of my favorite Disney animated movies of all time. That movie still exists, but then to take that material and use it as the foundation on which to do a big epic adventure movie. You can’t watch Gladiator with your five-year-old, it’s just not appropriate. But I love those movies, and when I was growing up I loved watching David Lean movies, and I loved watching these big-scale movies that told big stories.

Q: What was it about Niki Caro’s pitch that won the studio over? Marvel has established this great track record in hiring independent feature directors who lend their storytelling sensibility and vision to big budget spectacles. Was that also the thinking here?

Jason Reed: We had two big traditions that we wanted to honor making this film. We wanted to honor the cultural origins of the original story and we felt like we needed to honor the storytelling tradition of Disney. You have this huge fanbase for the original animated movie, you have this centuries-long global fanbase for the original story, and the movie, it subsequently becomes such a strong touch point for several other audiences as well: females in general, Asian diaspora and the LGBTQ community. So, we had a movie that was an important story for so many different people, and one of the things that we all knew was going to be important was how are we respectful and thoughtful about how we address all of that.

When I thought of Niki’s filmography, she has always been defined by her ability to go into specific cultures, find the universal story, and bring a mass audience into that world, whether it’s the Maori culture with Whale Rider or the miners in North Country or the runners in McFarland, USA, she has a sensitivity and a character-based approach to telling a story that I think allows her to put all of those pieces together. Secondly, she knows how to do a lot with less. Every day she was a problem solver. She just comes at telling story from a human, very character-driven place, and yes, we knew we had to do it at a scope, and a scale, and the action, and all of the thrills, but she never got lost in all of that because the most important thing for her was how do we use all of these tools to tell this woman’s story, and that’s a very independent way of thinking. So, I think those were the two things that really got the studio excited, and she just came in and won it in the room in the way she talked about building the team, and building the action, and telling the story, and bringing authenticity to a young woman’s journey and to finding a way to really make clear the pressures that someone at that time would face in their community.

Sotiris wrote:How Disney's live-action 'Mulan' cameo came together
https://www.insider.com/live-action-mul ... -wen-cameo

Is this the first time a voice actor has cameo’d in the live action remake? It makes me a little more optimistic that Jodi Benson might appear in TLM, although that may be complicated by COVID now.

farerb wrote:Why is it so wrong of Belle or Jasmine or Mulan to show any emotion or cry? That doesn't make them weak, it makes them human.

Sotiris wrote:That means people will only be able to buy access to the film for two months. [...] What kind of messed up release strategy is this? Will they really be able to make their money back in just two months?

UmbrellaFish wrote:https://twitter.com/mariograciotti/stat ... 49472?s=21

That is a very direct commercial to a very specific audience. Even the castle used for the generic Disney logo is not recognizable as a real theme park castle, instead a made-up castle taking inspiration from both Sleeping Beauty Castle and Cinderella Castle.