Disney Pictures will be making an all Chinese-language fantasy flick this summer that centers on a vegetable. It will be called “The Magic Gourd” and the long-time film company is hoping to make magic with it by attracting this untapped 1 billion member audience.
The movie is based on the children’s novel by the late Zhang Tianyi, famous for writing children’s morality tales. A boy finds a squash, which is also known as a vegetable called a gourd, and it grants the young fellow several wishes.
Rich Ross, the president of Disney’s Worldwide office told a press briefing that the greatest challenge in getting this written fable, (which was once featured in a cartoon series on Chinese television), to the big screen for a Chinese audience was getting State permission for access to that audience.
The hope is that “in addition to bringing more Disney family entertainment content to China, we attach great importance to finding locally relevant and appealing content which complements our existing story values,” so stated Stanley Cheung, managing director of Disney China.
Disney shied away from using regular iconic staples like Mickey, Pluto and the rest of the Disney lineup for a magical Gourd because Mickey and the gang have little relevance to Chinese culture, while the gourd is a very popular and common vegetable staple in Chinese food dishes, and a part of much of Asian folklore. The company also finds that by using characters that are socially germane to Chinese culture to tell their stories they have fewer problems clearing the tough standards of Chinese censorship that has taunted American films for years.
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