Angelina Jolie‘s upcoming movie, Come Away, is breaking a lot of boundaries as it’s a flick based on fairytales that historically have white-only leads.
However, the new movie, which imagines Peter Pan and Alice (of Wonderland) as siblings, and are part of a multi-racial family. Angelina and David Oyelowo star as their parents.
Brenda Chapman, known for directing Pixar’s Brave, is putting critics and review bombers on blast for the negative words they have left about the flick without even seeing it.
“It just made me sad, like so much of our society these days, the last four years,” she told IndieWire during a recent interview. “It just makes me sad that we haven’t risen above all this.”
Brenda added, “People are people and we all have our hopes and dreams and disappointments, and to have someone just purposely go out because they’re racial bigots to destroy something, it’s just hateful and it just makes me sad.”
She also pointed out that when they were first casting the project, her eyes did skim by David‘s name because of the historically white context. But then, she had the opportunity to do something not a lot of others have done and cast color blindly.
“I was disappointed, oh, it’s too bad, I’d love to work with him, and I moved on and then I sort of went back to his name like, wait a minute, why not?,” Brenda said. “And then, going through the story in my mind, it was like, I don’t need to change anything. It would open up the story so much more.”
She added, “I didn’t choose David for political reasons, I chose him because I thought he was the best person to play Jack, because he’s got such a warmth and a presence on screen that it just felt like I looked at the story and I thought this would just add so much depth to it. It was an artistic choice.”
Come Away just got an official premiere date and a whimsical and heartbreaking new trailer. Watch it here…
