The 1990’s saw an explosion in environmentally conscious media. Cartoons were a big place for this. Need proof? Look at Captain Planet and the Planeteers. That was the poster child for environmentally friendly programming. On the big screen we didn’t see as much of this, but we did have FernGully: The Last Rainforest. This 1992 animated feature was a flop at release. In the 34 years since its release though, it has received a lot of retroactive praise. It’s also getting a live-action remake and we’re very much down for it.
Marielle Heller will be bringing FernGully back as both its writer and director. Heller previously directed Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. She also wrote and directed 2015’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Here, she’ll have to help bring to real-life, a story that unfolded in the depths of an animated forest. She’ll also essentially be trying to remake the inspiration for Avatar. The James Cameron film incidentally borrowed the premise of FernGully. If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically about a man working for a logging company. Through as series of events he gets shrunk down to the size of a fairy by one of the fairies inhabiting the forest. From there, he starts learning about his destructive deeds and must save the forest from the people he was working with.
FernGully never got its due back in the day. This new version will be coming from Amazon/MGM. They’ve got the money and the power to throw behind a project like this. The original film lost money at the box office for 20th Century Fox despite it having a lot going for it. The score by Alan Silvestri was great and it gave us amazing vocal performances including Robin Williams as Batty and Tim Curry as Hexxus. They steal the show. Curry gets a villain song called “Toxic Love” that he hams up beautifully. Williams meanwhile is basically doing The Genie from Aladdin before that film hit theaters. They’re incredible.
Sadly, Williams has passed away and Curry hasn’t been able to perform like he used to after the stroke he suffered in 2012. So if FernGully is going to be reinvented for live-action, it can be done in a way that leaves those animated performances untouched. No one is choosing someone over Williams or Curry since they’re unable to return to their roles. Though hopefully they consult Curry over who would be a good Hexxus; that would be wonderful.
Is it too much to ask that this new FernGully be shot on location in a rainforest? That would help showcase the beauty of nature. That’s something the original film was all about. And we’ve seen environmentalist messages work in other films like Hoppers recently. Given all that’s happening in our world and the devastation of climate change, we kind of need FernGully now more than we ever did. So let’s see it get some of the respect it deserves on the big screen.
We look forward to delivering more news including casting information and a release date in the upcoming months.
