"The 7D" Gets a Promo & Premere Date (aka Disney Does Smurfs)

You know Disney's classic Snow White, and how greatly loved those dwarfs have been through generations? Well they're getting their own  "pre-Snow White" TV series spin-off (can a prequel be a spin-off?), full of crazy fun and wacky adventures (you may have seem my previous post from long, long ago HERE). Well that's what we've been told is happening here. In reality the dwarfs and any connection they have with the Disney classic, apart from the names, if pretty much undetectable, let alone any link to a real fairy tale.

Basically, with 7D (which stands, of course, for Seven Dwarfs), Disney are doing their version of The Smurfs.

Am I being too critical? Here's the trailer so you can judge for yourself:

I wouldn't care at all if Disney created their version of Smurfs - not my thing, I don't need to spend time on it, but they're SPECIFICALLY saying these are an updating of the classic Seven Dwarfs (in the style of the guy who did Fish Hooks).

The premise:

Described as a comedic take on the world of Seven Dwarfs in a contemporary storybook world, 7D takes place in Jollywood where Queen Delightful relies on the 7D — Happy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy and Doc — to keep the kingdom in order. Standing in their way are two laughably evil villains, Grim and Hildy Gloom, who plot to take over the kingdom by stealing the magical jewels in the 7D’s mine.

It might be funny. People may think it's cute. I've heard positive things from people working there. And hey, to give credit where credit is due, after all the hideous things done to Mickey Mouse, the most recent property of Mickey Mouse shorts, in design, writing and sensibility, are rather brilliant. (Take a look HERE if you don't believe me.)

But why did they have to touch an already beloved (and, to put it in dollars, still highly marketable) set of characters, whom people still love seeing? It's not like these are, for example, the (thankfully) mostly-forgotten terrible Goons of Sleeping Beauty that are both a Disney property and untapped.

The show, standing on it's own legs, is likely to be either awful or pull an Adventure Time and be surprisingly great,  (emphasis on the "surprisingly" here) but, at the risk of sounding like one of those "get off my lawn!" folk, either way the fairy tale connection appears to be pretty much teetering in at the zero mark. (You can see a whole post I wrote a while back on re-imagining Snow White's dwarves, from realism to OUAT to blockbusters and some very different illustrations, HERE.)

 I guess we'll find out for sure on Monday, July 7th when it premieres.

(My sad face is on.)