Disney’s live-action take on Winnie the Pooh just got a pretty significant update. Director Marc Forster has signed into the film which follows the exploits of a grown-up Christopher Robin.
That’s the title, too: Christopher Robin, and it’s written by Alex Ross Perry. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of Forster’s attachment, and dropped this very familiar sounding plot description:
The story centers on Robin, the adult version of the boy who in the A.A. Milne books shares his adventures with the animals of the Hundred Acre Wood. Robin has grown out of the joyful imagination he had as a young boy and is now a businessman who prioritizes work over his wife and daughter. With his home life on the brink, the last thing his life needs is the return of Pooh, who needs his help in finding his friends again. Robin has to find a way to help both sides or risk losing everything he holds dear.
So, it’s Steven Spielberg’s Hook but with Winnie the Pooh instead of Peter Pan? Bangarang. Got it.
Forster, himself, is a curious choice for the film. We’ve seen him do human emotion, with films like The Maze Runner and Finding Neverland, but he’s better known for action, with films like Quantum of Solace and World War Z. He’s going to have to mix that first sensibility with the high-tech effects of the action films to create a movie that stands alongside Disney’s current live-action fairy tale films, like The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast.