Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, co-frontman of the hip-hop band The Roots and musical renaissance man, will host an upcoming hybrid live-action adaptation of The Aristocats for Walt Disney Studios. Yes, you read that right.
In a breaking news report that reads eerily like a Mad Libs prompt, Deadline reported Monday that Thompson, who won the Best Documentary Oscar at last year’s Academy Awards for Summer of the soul, will executive produce and oversee the music for the film, in addition to directing. The script for The Aristocats remake is written by Easy A director-screenwriter Will Gluck and Keith Bunin, who wrote the 2013 screenplay Horns with Daniel Radcliffe.
Thompson reportedly weighed several options for his sequel to Summer of the soul before settling in The Aristocats as his feature film directing debut. It’s far from the first time Disney has enlisted an Oscar-winning director to helm a hybrid live-action adaptation of one of the studio’s beloved animated films. Moonlight director Barry Jenkins is currently working on a prequel for 2019 The lionkingtitled “Mufasa: The Lion King”, which will hit theaters next year.
The original 1970 animated musical directed by Wolfgang Reitherman of One Hundred and One Dalmatiansfame, follows a family of Parisian domestic cats who learn they are about to inherit a large fortune from their elderly owner. When their owner’s jealous butler schemes to cheat the cats out of their inheritance, the cat family must team up with a street-wise tomcat named Thomas O’Malley to beat the conniving butler at his own game.
