For more than half a century, there have been “no trespassing” signs around the fictional Hundred Acre Wood—the home of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends—preventing curious TV producers, film executives and animators from putting their own spin on the “bear of very little brain.” Until recently, the rights acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 1961 from the estate of author A. A. Milne have prevented other production companies from creating their own Pooh-based projects. But that exclusive license expired in January 2022, putting the IP into the American public domain.

In an article on page 21, Kidscreen’s Sadhana Bharanidharan looks at two new interpretations of Pooh and takes a deeper dive into the enticing “hunny pot” of public-domain properties. While it’s easy to understand why businesses are attracted to reviving well-known IPs—especially in this current economic climate when it’s harder to finance and sell shows based on original content—there are times when the industry should perhaps stop and ask itself: “Just because we can adapt something, should we?”

It’s one thing to revisit Pooh—a character created with children in mind. It’s a completely different thing to take an adult novel about lust, obsession, possession, revenge, torture and murder written at the beginning of the 20th century and develop it into a YA movie franchise. But that seems to be what Disney is doing with a new project based on Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera that has been greenlit for development by Disney Branded Entertainment and Kenny Ortega.

When I first read about this, I was stunned. Maybe it’s just because I’m new to the industry, but I just don’t understand why anybody would even consider this source material viable for YA viewers in a post-Me Too era.

In the novel, singer Christine was the object of two men’s desires: childhood friend Raoul (who has no adult relationship with Christine, but “loves” her anyway, and still somehow manages to impugn her honor) and the Phantom himself (who gaslights Christine, kidnaps her and forces her to agree to marriage under duress). Christine isn’t even the narrator of her own story. It’s not a tale of female agency—not even in the slightest.

I’m not saying that kids should be kept from classic literature. As a teen, I read works by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, but I knew they were going to be full of historical anachronisms and outdated attitudes. I’m also not saying that young adults shouldn’t be shown stories about relationships—good, bad or problematic.

In fact, I’m saying the opposite—it’s a positive thing for them to see what relationships can look like and the consequences they can inflict. However, I believe it’s crucial to show these in a modern context, with sensibilities that reflect current thinking, not the baked-in attitudes that were common more than 100 years ago, when women and girls were viewed and treated very differently.

“But it’s a Disney adaptation,” I can hear my critics saying. “It’s sure to be modernized and sanitized and made more palatable for today’s audience.” But at that point, what is it? It’s not Phantom. It’s a based-on-the-book-jacket adaptation riding on the coattails of a well-known brand whose modern popularity owes much to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It’s a Ship of Theseus with every plank replaced except a few character names. It’s also a potentially huge project that eats up resources that could be devoted to creating an original IP—even a gothic romance in Paris, if Disney so desires.

Again, it comes down to the question: Just because an adaptation can be made, should it?

This editorial originally appeared in Kidscreen’s Q4 2024 magazine issue.