Update, 4/25/18:
See Winnie the Pooh and friends in exclusive new Christopher Robin images https://t.co/4sig0g7zSM
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) April 25, 2018
Winnie the Pooh and his friends on the beach. My heart was not prepared for this kind of cuteness today, but thanks to Entertainment Weekly‘s exclusive reveal of a new image from Christopher Robin, I’ve turned into a puddle on the floor. Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger belong together (even though I refused to put thought into whether they would need sunscreen while lounging on the sand), and I’m glad they’ll all be in the upcoming movie, maybe helping Christopher find his way back to some joy.
Previously:
As someone over 30 working in a field where watching and reviewing what is ostensibly children’s entertainment is the norm, I know the importance of staying young at heart. The stuff I loved when I was a kid is still pretty much the same stuff I love now, and that’s really the luxury of the world today; nostalgia remains profitable and nobody has to put away childish things to grow up. This wasn’t always the case, and even some of the most childish of children had to put on a suit and pick up a briefcase. Even someone as famous for having an imagination as Christopher Robin…
Disney‘s latest live-action adaptation of their animated properties is a bit of a different take on the Winnie the Pooh story, sort of akin to Hook and Peter Pan. The above trailer finds a grown up Christopher Robin played by Ewan McGregor, dealing with the travails of adulthood, personified by his sniveling boss, played by Mark Gatiss. Unable to go on a trip with his family, he gets a visit from his old pal Winnie the Pooh, voiced here as for the past 30 years by Jim Cummings. It’s a brief teaser, but we get to see the CGI version of Pooh, a melding of the A.A. Milne-era plush toy and the Disney character everyone knows.
This movie looks to be an antithesis to Goodbye Christopher Robin from last year, in which the beauty and innocence of Milne’s son’s childhood pretending became a bestselling series of books and thus ruined the boy’s life. So maybe don’t watch that one if you’re going to watch this one. In addition to McGregor and Gatiss, the human cast includes Hayley Atwell, while the voice cast includes Toby Jones as Owl, Chris O’Dowd as Tigger, Peter Capaldi as Rabbit, Sophie Okonedo as Kanga, Brad Garrett as Eeyore, and Nick Mohammed as Piglet. But you can’t have anyone but Jim Cummings voice Pooh. It just wouldn’t be proper!
Christopher Robin, directed by Marc Forster, is due in theaters August 3, 2018.
Image: Disney
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He’s written the animation retrospectives Batman: Reanimated, X-Men: Reanimated, Cowboy Rebop, and Samurai reJacked. Follow him on Twitter!
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