A Wishbone Movie Will Bring the Literary Pup’s Historical Adventures to the Big Screen

A Wishbone Movie Will Bring the Literary Pup’s Historical Adventures to the Big Screen

Not all kids are interested in history and classic literature, but most kids are very interested in cleverly melded the two, offering both an educational experience and a chance to see a Jack Russell terrier embrace each episode’s theme in full costume. It’s a winning formula, and it’ll be making a comeback soon on the big screen.

As Deadline reports, Universal Pictures and Mattel Films have joined forces for a live-action Wishbone movie, with Peter Farrelly (Green Book) coming aboard as a producer. No director has been named yet, but newcomer Roy Parker will pen the script, which Mattel Films’ Robbie Brenner hints will “take the beloved dog classic into a new direction with a modern reimagination of the franchise.”

The original series won multiple Emmys and a Peabody award, so presumably its basic premise — in which a daydreaming dog named Wishbone imagines himself into classic stories, including Oliver Twist, Faust, Frankenstein, multiple Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes tales, The Odyssey, a series of African American folktales, and The Count of Monte Cristo, to name but a few — won’t change too much.

While Wishbone feels like a potential slam dunk, the Deadline article also takes a moment to reminds us of what else is on Mattel Films’ slate of projects in development — in case you’d forgotten (as we had) that movies based on Magic 8 Ball and View-Master toys are still on the way.


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