There is always the same moment when a live-action version of a popular animated film is being developed: the announcement is made, the internet reacts with a mix of cautious excitement and preemptive dread, and everyone begins to build arguments for why this one will either be different from all the others that failed or will be exactly the same. At that precise moment, the live-action Magic School Bus movie is officially underway at Legendary Entertainment, with Rob Letterman directing and Elizabeth Banks starring.
Contrary to what its present announcement implies, the project has been ongoing for a longer period of time. After Universal Pictures announced it in June 2020, it didn’t proceed, as is often the case with studio development projects at that time. Rights expired. They were taken up by legend. Elizabeth Banks remained involved. She is producing with Scholastic Entertainment and Marc Platt Productions through her Brownstone Productions. Even if it doesn’t reveal anything conclusive about the finished movie, the project has survived the development purgatory that kills most adaptations before they reach a director attachment.
The fascinating part comes in the casting question. Lily Tomlin provided the voice of Ms. Frizzle in the 1994 animated series. In the books, Ms. Frizzle is Valerie Frizzle, a teacher of extraordinary eccentricity who takes her class on impossible field trips in a sentient bus that can shrink, fly, travel through time, and transform into whatever the lesson plan requires. Millions of us who grew up watching the show on PBS will always remember that voice and the unique energy Tomlin brought to it. Every live-action casting is unavoidably a comparison to something that people genuinely care about.
When compared to that difficulty, Elizabeth Banks is a sensible option. She is producing, which implies real investment rather than a hired hand going through the motions, and she has shown the particular kind of high-energy, slightly insane comedic enthusiasm that Ms. Frizzle requires. Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games carried a version of it, and Cocaine Bear’s veterinarian had another. Casting that technically matches the specifications but lacks the feel for the particular register the material requires is a problem with any treasured intellectual property. Banks appears to comprehend the register.
The announcement’s more structurally important aspect is Letterman’s participation. Detective Pikachu tackled the problem of taking a cherished animation product and making it work as live-action without damaging what made the original material worth translating in a way that most video game adaptations don’t. Both those who were familiar with the original material and those who weren’t were able to follow the film since it understood its own tone—warm but not corny, visually innovative without being illogical—and executed it with enough skill. For a little different audience, Goosebumps accomplished something comparable. Both needed handling the mix of character-driven humor and CGI-heavy visual effects that The Magic School Bus will definitely require.
The final component of any structural case for the prospects of this endeavor is the source material itself. Over 90 million copies of Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen’s novels have been sold. On PBS, the animated series lasted for four seasons. In 2017, a similar Frizzle persona was voiced by Kate McKinnon in the Netflix reboot. Three different generations of kids have seen Ms. Frizzle and the Bus in one way or another. This implies that the millennial parents who grew up watching the original are now raising kids who might have seen the Netflix version, and both groups could be prospective movie fans.
It’s actually unclear if any of this will result in a successful live-action Magic School Bus. There are so many well-meaning adaptations with talented actors and directors that hope needs to be tempered. However, the combination of an IP with true multigenerational depth, a director who has handled this particular genre of picture before, and a celebrity who appears to comprehend the assignment is not nothing. In actuality, it’s a more legitimate place to start than the majority of these initiatives.
