BBC working on a Watership Down CGI series

[Red]

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/bbc-plans-to-improve-watership-down-with-cgi-2-110217.html(Credit goes to Davictoes for the link)

 

Note: Link above contains a video with graphic NSFW content. View at your own risk.

 

The BBC have plans to "improve" Watership Down with a new CGI TV series. They constantly mention the 1978 film, so I guess the series will be a CGI adaption of that and not the 1999 TV series.

 

For those not in the know, Watership Down is a book about rabbits searching for a new home, facing many perils and challenges along the way. But it's more well known for the 1978, which contained graphic amounts of blood and gore for an animated film.

 

So yeah, this is a thing. It will be interesting to see what they do with it. I just hope it's a faithful adaption, because it opens up potential for similar books (like Warriors) to be adapted into a CGI film or TV series, Will give it a watch for sure.

[Big Panda]

STOP. THE. CGI REMAKES.

Fuck sake.

[Nepenthe]

There's nothing wrong with CGI. It's a medium like any other. =/

Anyway, I'm hoping it's a small mini-series of some sort. That'll give them a bigger budget per episode to improve the look and not have uncanny valley-looking rabbits.

[Hero of Legend]

Remember the TV show in the 2000's? Is that like a record for the most "taming" of a film in the TV show adaptation/sequel series?

[Kevin]

Anyway, I'm hoping it's a small mini-series of some sort. That'll give them a bigger budget per episode to improve the look and not have uncanny valley-looking rabbits.

Same here. It could work out too if BBC executes it right and hopefully it'll be a good adaptation of the book.

[Tara]

There's nothing wrong with CGI. It's a medium like any other. =/

Anyway, I'm hoping it's a small mini-series of some sort. That'll give them a bigger budget per episode to improve the look and not have uncanny valley-looking rabbits.

I don't have anything against the CGI as much as I'm just sick of seeing things modernized that don't really need to be modernized, let alone remade in any shape or form.

 

I am curious to see what they mean by CGI, though.  Cartoony CGI or realistic CGI?  I can see the merits of the latter, as it would be the closest thing to a live action version of the film short of making an animal snuff film.  I'm interested to see where this goes artistically, but I probably won't see it because I have a very weak stomach for that special breed of gratuitous animated violence.

[MightyRay]

No thanks I'll pass. Watership down is fine as it is. To me it's hardly aged at all and it doesn't really need a remake.

[Delta Starfire]

Er... does anyone else get the idea, from the tone of the article, that this might just be a hoax? Do remember what day next Wednesday is, after all.

 

But if it's not a hoax, I'm really not sure this needs to be re-done. The old film is a masterpiece of British animation from a year when British film really wasn't doing anything else. It's a classic. Of course, classics get re-made all the time, and that's not always a bad thing, but I really don't think this one needs the modern treatment. The film is still a visual spectacle and it still holds up today, nearly forty years later. Moreover, given the way modern cinema works, I do worry that a film ostensibly aimed at a family audience will fail to convey the seriousness of the book's themes and will fill the script with unnecessary comic relief. If anything, Watership Down should not be that kind of film.  

[JezMM]

I personally found Watership Down to not live up to all the hype surrounding it at all when I finally watched it, so it'll be interesting to see if this remake appeals to me at all.  I definitely can't see it being as intense as the original though, BBC don't strike me as daring enough to make a CG animation that isn't suitable for all ages by today's standards.

[Gabz Girl]

It's not the fact that it's CGI that bothers me, but that the only reason they want to make it CGI in the first place (from what I read on Cartoon Brew) is because of realistic fur. That's it.

 

If their focus is on fur then I can only hope they make it look good, especially if it's a BBC tv series. And I hope they don't tone down the violence like the animated series. At least make it PG-13.

[Mogtaki]

Oh man, I wish I could be a part of that project because Watership Down is one of my most favourite films and books.

CGI isn't a bad thing so I'm not sure why there's still complaints about CGI remakes. It involves just as much effort as drawing from scratch, if not more.

[iDEATH]

I love the film, I've still to read the book as the copy I had was my Mum's original copy and was pretty much disintegrating in my hands as I tried to read. The series.....yeah...

 

But hey, nothing wrong with CGI, nothing wrong with remakes and adaptations, as long as the writing is top quality and the dark tone isn't wattered down, I'm looking forward to this.

[Nepenthe]

Watership Down is an adventure tale about real rabbits whose only difference from the physical entity is that they have a primitive language and culture. And indeed to a human within that world, they essentially are just normal rabbits. The film addresses this choice and designs the rabbits as realistically as possible with only admittedly enough features on them for the sake of the audience being able to distinguish between individuals and for them to emote. With all of that said, if you were on the team deciding on the aesthetic qualities of a Watership Down remake, would you honestly choose traditional animation to convey this, and why? And in fact, if this remake were announced as a special but done in modern hand-drawn animation instead like the good ol' days, would anyone be complaining about "oh great, another remake?" =/

 

I get the feeling that a lot of the knee-jerk hostility towards CGI now is not only because it is simply ubiquitous, but because we were around to witness the general shift between the standard genres of what animated films use. But time and technology progresses. Disney himself had to wrestle with that when they had to abandon traditional ink and painting and put people out of work when the expenses of doing such were literally killing his studio, and I imagine if he were around today and could see how far CGI's progressed in order to be able to emulate the principles of traditional and express its own form of life, he'd think twice about being so emotionally beholden to the art form. Granted, I'm not saying that traditional is bad, and heck I don't even believe it's as dead as people make it out to be; but rather that CGI should be an artistic choice that can be used like any other without people coming down on creators and leveling disgust at them for simply going in that direction.

[Gabz Girl]

http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/05/18/bbc-produced-watership-down-remake-to-air-next-year/

 

The Watership Down remake is going to air sometime next year on BBC One as a four-part miniseries.

 

 

He describes the animation as being “incredibly detailed” and that the violent nature of the story will also be maintained, saying here: “Our new version will have the charm and the brutality of that story which can be about many things… leaving home, finding your own community.”

[Tara]

Oh good.  I was wondering when they would address rather or not the new version would be just as much a gratuitous gorefest as the original. XD

[TheGerkuman]

I'm hope we're getting a good TV adaption because the other one wasn't very good. (The film was great, but it had John Hurt and Richard Briers in it so it pretty much had to be great.) My big question is whether they're going to leave the Folk Stories in. They don't really affect the plot but it illustrates rabbit-kind so much that it was a shame the film had to cut a lot of it out. But if it's a mini-series then they don't have to worry about that, so long as it doesn't bog everything down.