7 Fairy Tales That Won’t Be Disney’s New Blockbuster

They can't all be Frozen.

1. Hans The Hedgehog

Potential Concerns for the Disney Adaptation:

- A human woman giving birth to a spiny mammal.
- Abduction by Hedgehog
- Questionable morality all around

Picture this as the next 'Lion King':

A merchant's wife gives birth to a boy who is a hedgehog from the waist up. They call him Hans. No one wants to hang out with Hans. As a teenager, he spends most of his time alone in the woods; playing the bagpipes… and helping lost kings find their way home in exchange for their daughters.

When one of the kings refuses to hand over his daughter, Hans kidnaps the girl, pierces her skin with his spines, and sends her back to her father looking like a human pincushion. Despite being a complete sociopath, Hans is somehow able to transform into a handsome young man—just in time for his wedding night with another (more compliant) princess.

Warning: The Hans the Hedgehog doll may not be appropriate for children under… actually; it may not be appropriate for anyone. Ever.

2. The Girl Without Hands

Potential Concerns for Disney Adaptation:

- Lots of really terrible people
- Medical procedures in unsanitary conditions
- Objectification of women

A miller accidentally turns over his daughter to the devil in exchange for immense wealth. However, the girl’s hands are so pure that the devil cannot take her. So her father makes the totally sane choice of cutting off his daughter’s hands, but the devil still thinks she’s too much of a goody-goody to introduce to his friends in Hell.

A king eventually falls in love with the girl and makes her some silver hands, which, while impractical, are certainly a classy upgrade. But the devil refuses to let the miller’s promise go unfulfilled, and tricks the girl into running away. The silver-handed girl and her baby live alone in the woods for seven years, after which the king is finally able to locate them.

“Hakuna Matata” (No Worries) would be much too tame for her situation—how do you say “No PTSD” in Swahili?

3. Fitcher's Bird

Potential Concerns for Disney Adaptation:

- Kidnapping
- Mutilated corpses
- Lots and lots of homicide

A sorcerer kidnaps the eldest daughter from a family with three girls. He forbids his new “guest” from going into one particular room in his house.

Of course, the girl goes into the forbidden room, where she finds hacked-up dead bodies. As punishment, the sorcerer hacks her up as well. The sorcerer then kidnaps her second sister and does the exact same thing. When he kidnaps the youngest sister, however, she stays out of the forbidden room and agrees to marry the sorcerer, pretending to succumb to his (murderous) charm.

But secretly the youngest sister re-assembles her sisters as if they were Lego pieces and brings them back to life. She dresses up as a bird (?!!!) and sneaks out to invite her relatives to the wedding. However, due to some sloppy planning and bad communication, the wedding guests lock the sorcerer and the girls in the house and burn it all down.

At least when Ursula the Sea Witch staged a fake wedding, nobody died.

4. Bluebeard

Potential Concerns for Disney Adaptation:

- One seriously nasty dude.
- A larger pile of mutilated corpses

Bluebeard is ugly but rich, so girls keep marrying him. Once they realize that all his wives eventually disappear, the village girls stop returning his calls. He eventually talks one girl into marrying him. After their wedding, he gives her the key to the forbidden room but also warns her not to enter it. The new Mrs. Bluebeard has a party and goes into the forbidden room—which is filled with the mutilated bodies of her husband’s former wives.

When Bluebeard returns, she locks herself in a tower. Before Bluebeard can kill his wife, her brothers come to the rescue and kill him. Mrs. Bluebeard inherits all of her husband’s money and eventually marries a guy who isn’t a crazy serial killer.

The sequel can follow Mrs. Bluebeard’s years of intensive therapy. Perhaps she and Rapunzel can form a “locked in a tower” support group.

5. Juniper Tree

Potential Concerns for Disney Adaptation:

- Homicide by millstone
- Cannibalism
- Does it really get worse than cannibalism?!

A woman dies giving birth to her son and is buried under her family’s juniper tree. Her husband remarries and his new wife gives birth to a daughter, Malinchen. However, the new wife hates her stepson because he will inherit all of the family’s wealth.

In a major parenting fail, the stepmother beheads her stepson and makes Malinchen think she did it. Mother and daughter then lie to the boy’s father and claim he ran away. The stepmother uses the boy’s body in a stew and feeds it to her husband; Malinchen saves the boy’s bones and buries them under the Juniper tree. Soon, a beautiful bird appears from the grave and drops a millstone on the stepmother’s head. When Malinchen comes out to investigate the noise, all she sees is her brother emerging from the dust.

Even Cinderella’s stepmother would find this movie disturbing. “And you call me evil? I just made her do chores!”

6. The Red Shoes

Potential Concerns for Disney Adaptation:

- Vindictive shoes
- Disembodied feet taking on a life of their own and terrorizing a disabled young girl.

A spoiled little girl named Karen cons her adoptive mother into buying her a pair of fancy red shoes (19th Century Louboutins?). Karen becomes increasingly bratty and even deserts her ill mother to go dancing in her red shoes. Soon thereafter, Karen can't stop dancing and her shoes are stuck to her feet.

The shoes carry Karen through thorny bushes that cut her up. She eventually finds an executioner to cut off her feet, which continue to dance even though they are no longer attached to her body. Karen tries to go to church to atone for her sins, but her amputated feet in the shoes block her entry (and probably freak everyone out). Eventually, an angel grants Karen mercy by ending her earthly life and sending her soul to Heaven.

The soundtrack, featuring the song "Let [Your Feet] Go" may have difficulty cracking the top 40.

7. The Singing Bone

Potential Concerns for Disney Adaptation:

- Fratricide over a boar corpse
- Haunted human bones that sing
- Creation of a pillow with human stuffing
- Drowning aforementioned pillow

A wild boar is terrorizing a village—destroying fields and killing peasants. The king proclaims that anyone who can kill the beast can have his daughter’s hand in marriage (sounds like a show on Bravo).

Only two poor brothers are up to the task. They go into the woods separately and the younger brother kills the animal, while his older brother gets wasted in a bar.

The older brother kills his younger brother on the way out of the woods and takes all the credit for killing the boar. Years later, a shepherd finds a bone in the same woods. To his surprise, the bone sings a song, telling the truth about the brothers. The shepherd brings the incriminating bone to the king, who has his son-in-law sewn into a sack and drowned as punishment.

It’s safe to say that this family’s Thanksgiving is going to be sufficiently awkward this year. The Princess is gonna be all, “I’m trying to date again after a bone told dad to kill my husband.”

Written by Soman Chainani, Harvard educated fairy tale expert and bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil

http://schoolforgoodandevil.com