David Lowery, director of The Green Knight, is bringing some A24 arthouse inspiration with him to Disney with the revelation that his upcoming film Peter Pan & Wendy has been influenced by Robert Eggers' 2019 art-horror film The Lighthouse.
Lowery shared this tidbit during a Reddit AMA on August 17, in which user OperationValueson described aspects of The Green Knight as being "references" to fellow A24 releases The Lighthouse and Midsommar and asked if the director was "proud of" any particular references. Lowery denied any references in The Green Knight, saying "It's all a coincidence! I hadn't seen Midsommar or The Lighthouse when we made the film. That being said, my new Disney film was very influenced by The Lighthouse."
Peter Pan & Wendy will be David Lowery's second movie made for Disney, the first being the 2016 remake of Pete's Dragon. Though one of the less successful of Disney's run of live-action remakes at the box office, Pete's Dragon was by far one of the most popular with critics, with an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 71 rating on Metacritic.
This is yet another turn in Lowery's eclectic filmography, which ranges from crime films like Ain't Them Bodies Saints and The Old Man & the Gun to the Spielbergian Pete's Dragon to the mournful minimalist drama of A Ghost Story to the Arthurian legend of The Green Knight. The Lighthouse, an abstract R-rated thriller about two sexually frustrated seamen going insane in isolation, isn't exactly the first film most people would assume would inspire a PG-rated Disney fairy tale, but drawing inspiration from unexpected places is one of Lowery's trademarks as a filmmaker.
Given Lowery and his Pete's Dragon co-writer Toby Halbrooks began work on the Peter Pan script in 2016 and took their time trying to get it right before starting production this year, perhaps The Lighthouse was really the secret ingredient to making the script for the new Peter Pan adaptation work successfully.
Peter Pan & Wendy stars Alexander Molony as Peter Pan, Ever Anderson as Wendy Darling, Yara Shahidi as Tinker Bell, Jude Law as Captain Hook and Jim Gaffigan as Smee. The movie recently concluded filming and will be released exclusively on Disney+ sometime in 2022.
David Lowery's The Green Knight is now playing in theaters and comes to VOD on August 19. Lowery also directed a segment in the upcoming pandemic-themed anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm, which will begin its limited theatrical release on September 3.
Source: Reddit