We knew this dark day would come.
In a homogenous, Hollywood-wide effort to leave no corner of your childhood unscathed, Waterman Entertainment has acquired the rights to The Brave Little Toaster, and announced their intentions to develop it as a computer-animated feature. For those who didn’t hit the late-1980s/early-1990s animation age sweet-spot dead on; Toaster followed a sentient toaster, vacuum cleaner, electric blanket, and lamp on a journey through the woods to re-join their masters, who have accidentally abandoned them at a vacation cabin.
Sound….familiar? Maybe like something else you may have seen? Actually, Toaster was originally pitched by John Lasseter in his pre-Pixar years at Disney. When he left for greener CG pastures, the idea was bought up by Hyperion Pictures and Kushner-Locke, who made the film in then-standard 2D.
Waterman Entertainment, in the past behind such family-friendly CG-laden rejiggering as Stuart Little and Casper, has plans to update the 1987 feature to include more modern technology, like the iPhone. (We’ll wait while you shudder in understandable horror.) Commercial plugs should be an unsurprising inclusion, since Waterman is also a rights-management company who have their eyes on multi-platform tie-ins for their new batch of properties.
Before we begin lamenting the End of Entertainment, (tempting as it is, believe you me) let’s look at the facts. Lasseter had intended for Toaster to be a CG film to begin with, so this deal has, in fact, a kernel of cosmic showbiz balance buried deep within. Moreover, the acquisition of a property means the purchase of rights only. The film is nowhere near production, and, as with the majority of these kinds of projects, could be shelved for years in what is known colloquially as Development Hell.
Which is where it belongs.
(via The Wrap)
