The Secret Garden is headed back to the big screen.

From Deadline:

Universal Pictures beat out four studios today to acquire a pitch for a new film version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden that will be scripted by Oscar-nominated Beasts Of The Southern Wild co-writer Lucy Alibar. She will work closely with Guillermo del Toro, who’ll produce with Mark Johnson.

JUST AS LONG AS THEY DON'T KILL OFF DICKON.

Yes, I'm still traumatised by the end of the 1987 version.

(via the CBC)

Comments

[Molly]

Agreed. Though there's also that crazy moment when you're rewatching it as an adult to remember your childhood, and all of a sudden in those last few minutes you realize it's COLIN FIRTH on the screen. COLIN FIRTH.

[Angie]

Still scarred.

[Leila]

So glad I'm not alone in being scarred by that ending.

HOWEVER, YES. Colin Firth is a soothing balm.

[Jessica Silverstein]

WHOAH, I think I maybe never made it to the end of that movie? I mostly remember the beginning, where Mary is basically wandering through the end of the world, or something? Anyway, I've never been big on film adaptations of FHB novels (don't even talk to me about the 1995 A Little Princess. Don't. Even.) but I may have to go back and watch that Secret Garden!

Also, if you want to be truly traumatized--in high school, my friend and I set out to find the weirdest fic on Fanfiction.net; we stopped after discovering Mary/Colin and Dickon/Colin adult-rated fic. (Not that there's anything wrong with two guys doing adult-rated things, of course, but just THOSE two guys. Also, cousins.)

[Leila]

I am now embarrassingly tempted to head over to Fanfiction.net. Aren't Mary and Colin cousins, too? Are they ALL cousins? I am suddenly totally blanking on the family tree from The Secret Garden.

[Emily]

Mary and Colin are first cousins! And worse, their mothers were twins if I remember correctly which makes them genetically half siblings. Nasty. I was squicked out even as a kid.

[Leila]

Heh. But Dickon? Is he related somehow? In a distant way, through his mother?

AUGH. First cousins doesn't generally give me the willies (so many historicals!), but the genetically half siblings thing just sent me for a loop. Yowza. (Then again, there are always exceptions: I'm looking at you, Lone Star.)

[willaful]

OMG. I think that's the one I walked out on, and I am so glad.

Dickon is no relation. He's the brother of the housemaid.

[Leila]

Ha! For some reason I was thinking that Dickon and Martha's mother was a distant cousin, somehow. :P

[Auntie M.]

There are class issues there, as well. Dickon had to be killed off because the comradeship the three experienced as children could not continue into adulthood since he was in a different social class than Mary and Collin.

[Leila]

@Auntie M.: But those problematic class issues were really only there because of the filmmaker's/screenwriter's choice to tack on that fifteen-years-later ending!

I mean, I totally take your point, and obviously the class issues would have been there in real life -- I understand the whys. But I don't like it anyway! *stamps foot*

(Also, killing him off to avoid any uncomfortable class issues is SUCH a lazy way out on the filmmaker's/screenwriter's part. The Great and Terrible Beauty trilogy ended similarly, and bothered me... er... similarly. :P)