Disney sets out to make sure mulan remake has all chinese cast
The mouse and company have been continuing to bring their animated films and give them the live-action treatment; films that have already been converted into live-action are Cinderella, The Jungle Book and Pete’s Dragon. These films were received rather well with both audiences and critics, with The Jungle Book being the fourth highest grossing film worldwide this year, bringing in a total of $966,236,024, beating Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Disney hasn’t received a lot of controversy with these films, but their plan on remaking Mulan has raised a few eyebrows.
Mulan was released in the United States on June 19th, 1998. The story revolves around a young woman taking her aging father’s place in the military and disguising herself as a man in order to save her father from death.
Hollywood has received controversy due to them casting white actors in non-white roles, or “whitewashing”; a more recent example of “whitewashing” is the casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange because Swinton is European, while The Ancient One is of Chinese descent in the comics.
However, Disney plans to avoid “whitewashing” by casting all Chinese actors to play the characters in the movie. According to IndieWire, “all primary roles will be Chinese”. There was a leaked script in which there was a European love interest and savior for Mulan, which deviates away from the source material. After this script was leaked, someone made a “petition urging Disney to cast an Asian actress in the part of Mulan[, a petition with close to] 90,000 signatures”. Even though the leaked script said there’d be a European love interest, people are still worried about whether Mulan will be played by an Asian actress.
Despite this being a leaked script, someone has already confirmed that “the ultimate film will feature only Chinese characters, with Mulan front and centre”. This script is being called a ‘spec script’, or speculative screenplay, meaning that the ideas in this type of script aren’t set in stone. A ‘spec script’ is more used by a writer so a studio will be the script, and that writer most likely changes some elements later on.
There are many, many furious people with this ‘spec script’, though. A few Twitter users have expressed their complaints.
The two tweets above make very substantial points. While there was eventually a romance between Mulan and the male character, Shang (BD Wong), that subplot wasn’t the main plot of the movie; the main plot was about Mulan saving her father from the military.
Mulan did make over $300 million at the box office, and it didn’t star one white actor, making $60 million more overseas than in the United States. According to The Numbers, Mulan was made for $90 million, and made $303.5 million worldwide.
Disney seems to be trying their best to make sure they accurately translate their animated film into a live action film. Regardless of what the ‘spec script’ said, the makers behind the movie are trying to get Asian actors to play all the characters instead of relying on well-known actors that don’t fit the look of the original characters.
Mulan has a release date of November 2nd, 2018.
