How Far Have Disney’s Family Values Evolved? This Film Says It All
Disney is looking to make Charles Darwin into an Indiana Jones-style adventure movie hero, according to an report from Deadline.
Though details are sparse on the just-completed deal between the media giant and Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, Deadline writer Mike Fleming Jr., claims insider information making him believe the as yet untitled film could paint “the father of evolutionary theory” as a swashbuckling adventurer akin to Indiana Jones.
Fleming points to Darwin’s early years on the H.M.S. Beagle as he embarked on a five-year journey to chart the South American coast, during which he made the discoveries and observations that would later become integral to his formation of his theory of evolution, postulating that this season of the scientist’s life could be the film’s focus.
Considering the box-office success the Indiana Jones franchise and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (both now in Disney’s expanding stable of high-profile licenses), is this just an attempt to combine the high adventure and seafaring dangers of those existing series? Or is there another reason behind the choice of this seemingly unlikely action hero?
Darwin was also the subject of 2009’s Creation, a drama which focused on his home life as he fleshed out his ideas for his landmark The Origin of the Species. But a Disney-branded big-budget adventure film glamorizing the life and character of evolutionary theory’s founder is—no pun intended—a whole different animal.
